


Schadenfreude

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 'Em Interrogates the Failures of Post Cold War European Integration Through Fanfic', 11.5x01, Adventure, Angst, Drama, Espionage, F/F, Family, Gen, Romance, Series 11.5, episodic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22033813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: An alien weapon of mass destruction, a murderous faction dead set on its return, an arms deal to end the world, and hell in high heels all converge on East Berlin in 1963...just in time for the Doctor and friends to drop in.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 93
Kudos: 326





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends!
> 
> This is the first part of hetzi_clutch's brainchild, Series 11.5, originally designed to drag us through the very last dregs of the hiatus. We're a little later than we intended, but we're still going forward with the project, which will follow a series arc and function in very much the same way an actual series would. 
> 
> This here is my offering, five chapters long, and a little more slapdash than I would have liked but, y'know,,,,Life
> 
> Chapters will be posted every day this week, after which a new episode written by a different author will start next Monday! Thanks again to Hetzi, Sara, Emily, and to all the authors involved with this project - I can't wait for you to see what we've been cooking...

——

CHAPTER ONE

Lexa Hardin was many things, not all of them especially good—but she knew a trap when she saw one. She could sense one in the air right now, an unease, left hanging.

The only question now was whether to spring it, or wait for it to be sprung. Both options were appealing in different ways. Either would be just as exciting, and if there was one thing she’d been missing over the last few years, it was excitement. 

She let a delicate hand toy with the collar of her shirt, as if she were nervous, eyeing the well-dressed man across from her.

“Mr. Ivanov,” she said, letting the harsh consonants of the human’s language roll tentatively off her tongue. “Have you made a decision?”

Ivanov’s dark eyes glared at her across the table, inscrutable. Likely, he thought it was intimidating.

“Where did you acquire this?” he asked, a gentle voice that belied his towering frame. He gestured to the sleek leather briefcase laying innocuously on the table in front of him. “I’ve consulted with my superiors. None of them have ever seen anything like it.”

“My supplier prefers anonymity,” she demurred. “If you’re concerned about the quality—”

“It’s not quality,” he said, and for a moment something flashed in his eyes that Lexa didn’t understand. She paused, leaning back in her chair. Perhaps it wasn’t a trap that she was sensing, after all.

Ivanov swallowed harshly, though his expression remained stony.

“This weapon,” he said. “What will it do?”

Lexa stilled. Displeasure began a slow roil in the pit of her stomach. Faint, like all her emotions were. A whisper, like the slightest breath of wind.

“Why, whatever you want it to do, Mr. Ivanov.” She raised her chin a fraction. A vibrant red curl moved into her peripheral vision. “I’ve told you. It’s small, but I think you’ll find it packs quite the punch. It makes your little nuclear reactions look like a kitchen fire.”

Something flashed in his eyes again. Lexa felt her lip curl, despite herself.

“It’s far more powerful than anything the Americans have. Or the British, or the Japanese, or anyone else on this entire planet. It could be yours, Mr. Ivanov.” She leaned forward, tilting her head so the meaning was clear. “Or it could be someone else’s. All you have to do is _choose_.”

Ivanov wavered.

“I’ve heard talk,” he said, in that quiet, gentle voice. “Things may be heated right now, but I’ve heard people saying that we’re headed for a kind of peace. That the war in South Asia might lead to a de-escalation, a—”

“Peace?” Lexa rolled the word around in her mouth, mocking. “This war has been going on for almost as long as you’ve been alive. Before that there was another war, and before that, another. You truly think peace is possible, Mr. Ivanov? On this violent little world of yours?”

Ivanov’s knuckles whitened into fists.

“If I take this weapon from you,” he said. “If I buy it for my homeland, then it never will be.” He looked her in the eye. “The Soviet Union has enough weapons, Miss Hardin,” he said. “We don’t want what you’re selling.”

Lexa met his gaze.

“Khrushchev sent a good man to negotiate,” she remarked, arming the blaster she was holding underneath the table, disappointed. She sighed. “That was his mistake.”

Ivanov’s dark, solemn gaze burned into her forehead as he disintegrated.

The blaster clicked as it reloaded. Lexa hitched it back to the holster strapped beneath her skirt and stood, lip curling in disgust.

“What a waste,” she said to the thin, smoking air.

She picked up the sleek, shiny briefcase and left, heels clicking on the linoleum. Disappointment curled in her gut, but she was far from defeated.

As the door to the hotel closed behind her, she breathed in the night air, taking in the cigarette smoke and pollution, the spilled beer and roasted dinners wafting out of windows. And underneath it all—the night, crisp and clean.

But not for long. She smiled, taking off leisurely along the Luisenstadt Canal.

Not for long.

—

A few blocks away from the Luisenstadt, its dry banks concealed by snaking walls of towering concrete, there was a duck pond.

“She’s moving, old chap,” one dark figure said to another, its face concealed by the brim of its bowler hat.

“Quite so,” its companion said, similarly dressed. Its shoes caught shinily in the lamplight. As it spoke, it tore off pieces of a stale loaf of bread and tossed them into the pond.

The first figure waited a moment, watching the midnight ducks descend on the bread.

“Will we pursue?” it asked. It did not sound impatient, as it was not programmed for such things.

The figure holding the bread paused. In the silence, the ducks squawked indignantly.

“No,” it said eventually, resuming its throwing of the bread. There was a rhythm to its tosses. A second between every quiet _plunk_ as the pieces hit the fetid water. “No, I don’t think so. There’s an order to these things, remember.”

Its companion did not sound disapproving. It was not programmed for such things.

“Quite so,” it said, adjusting its bowler hat. “Old chap, it’s only that—”

“There is an _order_.”

“Quite so.”

“Other pieces are moving.” The second figure drew in a breath that it didn’t need. Its eyes—if eyes, indeed, were what it had—looked wearily to the wall not far from them, bricks and mortar and concrete. Towering. “Some pieces are only just arriving. Trust in the order, old sport.”

The first figure glanced down at the pond, expressionless. Beady duck eyes flitted back at it, shiny, black. In the distance, a siren wailed.

“Quite so,” it said.

—

On the other end of the Luisenstadt, a rat watched with interest as reality itself was not-so-gently nudged aside. The alleyway—which, until this moment had been all but soaked in abandonment—was suddenly filled with a wheezing, aching moan.

Uneasy, the rat fled. In its place, the TARDIS came to a clammy, shuddering halt.

“Doc,” Graham was yelling, as he flung himself out the doors, ever so slightly singed, “you promised me we'd be home in time for lunch!”

“I was bein' optimistic!” the Doctor hollered back, stumbling out behind him. There was a piece of hair dangling in front of her eye, and the smell of burnt toast lingered around her. If Graham looked slightly singed, the Doctor looked rather like she’d just stuck a fork in an electrical socket. She glanced behind her, holding open the door for Ryan and Yaz. “Come on, out you get, get a shift on! Don’t breathe in any of the smoke!” She caught her breath as they made it out into the fresh air. “Besides,” she told Graham, trying in vain to smooth back some of the hair off her face, “this is a time machine, I can always get you home in time for lunch!”

“I’m just saying,” Graham complained, as smoke continued to pour out of the TARDIS doors, “you promise a bloke cocktails on the moon—”

“And one day,” she interrupted, looking faintly offended, “we’re _bound_ to make it.”

Ryan bent over with his hands on his knees, coughing.“Oh, my days,” he gasped. “Rough landing, mate.”

The Doctor let the doors shut, irritation forgotten, and wandered over to him. “I told you not to breathe it in,” she fussed, tilting his chin up, nose wrinkling in concern. She waved the sonic over him, frowning. Yaz caught her expression, rueful in the gloom. She’d been more protective, since New Year’s. Since the Dalek. More cautious. More inclined to take them sightseeing and then for cocktails, instead of into the arms of turtle armies—not that Graham was complaining. “Sorry, you three.”

“It’s alright,” Yaz said, turning back to the TARDIS, half-relieved but hardly willing to admit it. She crossed her arms against the chill, feeling poorly outfitted in her spring jacket. Night loomed overhead. The sky was dark and heavy with rain clouds. A smattering of decrepit flat blocks surrounded them, but Yaz couldn’t place them. They could have been a council estate anywhere in the world. For a moment, she felt a flash of homesickness that she ruthlessly smothered.

_You’ve only just left_ , she reminded herself, and the promise of it all brought a smile back to her face, even in spite of the smoke. She hadn’t wanted to go home just yet, anyway. “We can always go for cocktails later. What happened, just now?”

The Doctor had abandoned Ryan, upon determining that he wasn’t immediately in danger of suffocating, and was staring miserably back at the TARDIS, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised in chagrin as smoke continued to trail through the gaps in the door. “That’s not good,” she half-moaned. “Oh, I’m sorry, old girl.”

“You’re talkin’ to the TARDIS,” Yaz double-checked, before she wasted any energy becoming offended. “Right?”

The Doctor stalked closer to the ship, placing a hand gently on the side, frowning. “She needs to vent the smoke,” she determined, stepping back. “Her circuits overloaded, we must have landed—”

She took another step back, one boot landing in a puddle. Her eyes caught the murky sky above them.

“Somewhere.” She shivered.

“Doctor,” Ryan said, finally straightening. He adjusted his hat nervously, though his face was calm. “What was that?”

The Doctor answered him absently, still peering up at the sky. Looking for stars, Yaz thought. Trying to figure out where they were. “The TARDIS has been keeping an eye on sudden concentrations of artron energy, ever since that mess in Alabama. She’s programmed to go after it automatically, I thought—” She cleared her throat, a bit sheepishly. “I thought that would make things easier. Sometimes I forget to follow up. Didn’t think about it—”

“Throwing us halfway across the universe in the middle of an adventure?” Graham offered up, still sounding a bit sour about the whole thing. “Ah, well.” He softened with a sigh, turning to face out of the alley. “Is it one of those blokes like Krasko, then?” he asked over his shoulder. “Someone else mucking up history?”

“Could be,” the Doctor said, absently. Her nose wrinkled and her gaze sharpened as she ripped her eyes from the sky. “First things first, finding out where we’ve landed. Somewhere on Earth.” She sniffed, loudly. “And it smells like the twentieth century. Hold on, I'll try the soil—”

“Oh, don't,” Ryan protested, nose wrinkling in turn. “That's so gross, mate.”

“Uh, Doc,” Graham said, behind them. “Don't bother with the soil. We're in Berlin. At some point between 1961, and uh—well. 1989, I suppose.”

“How d'you reckon?” the Doctor asked, turning on her heel. She froze.

Just beyond the mouth of the alley, a towering wall of concrete sat snakelike along an empty canal.

“Ah,” the Doctor said, growing still. The back of Yaz’s neck prickled with unease. “Oh, dear.”


	2. 2.

Karl wiped the end of the bar again with a grimy rag, one foot tapping to the thrum of jazz barely audible under the hum of people talking. The night outside was thick with rainclouds and static, but the inside of Karl’s establishment was warm and dry, just like it always was. He tried to make it inviting, always, like the inside of his mother’s kitchen had been. A warm, yellow place.

Welcome to everyone, and so his regulars were sometimes a bit—

“Karl,” the professor said, sliding in with a wicked, wicked smile on her face. Her hair caught the warm light, yellow.

He nodded his head in acknowledgement. Karl was a man of few words. The professor’s smile deepened.

“Tell me you’ve seen something,” she said, teeth glinting. He passed her a thumb of gin in a glass, neat, and shook his head solemnly. She sipped it back in one swallow and placed the empty glass gently on the bar. Her brows knit together. “Really? Not one thing?”

The professor had been staying in the hotel—though hotel was a very generous word for it, if anyone were to ask him, which they didn’t—above Karl’s establishment for nearly two weeks now, and every evening she came downstairs to watch his customers and drink his gin. If she had been anyone else, he would have minded. If anything else, excessive foreigners tended to bring the eyes of the authorities, and he couldn’t afford their scrutiny. But there was something about her—some aspect that made him feel like she was someone who could be trusted. Someone who didn’t do anything without a good reason—or at least, without a good excuse.

Well. That—and she tipped well.

Even as her face fell, just barely a fraction, she slipped him a mark and two cigarettes discreetly. He pocketed both and poured her some more gin. She sipped it slower this time, inscrutable. Her face was like that, he’d come to realize. Expressive, to the point where it told you very little. And her eyes were very sad.

“Not who you’re looking for,” he said finally. But he jerked his head in the direction of one of the bar’s smallest corners, taking pity. “Over there. English.”

The professor’s eyes followed the tilt of his chin to the back corner, where he’d only minutes ago served a round of pints to a strange, raggedy bunch who spoke suspiciously perfect German and yet conversed amongst themselves in English. Not the kind of strange the professor had told him she was watching for, but strange nonetheless. And besides, he thought, watching her eyes glint with interest. Perhaps she missed her countrymen. It didn’t do to be too lonely. That was why he spent so much time behind the bar.

“Spies?” he asked quietly, leaning into the bar. There were plenty of them about, these days. 

She watched them for a moment, smiling amusedly. The gin in her hand caught the edge of his nose, sharp, bitter. “Not very good ones,” she said, sliding off her stool. She walked backwards for a moment, gracefully, grinning at him. “I’ll be back. I’m going to have a conversation.”

He grunted, watching her for a moment. Then he sighed and went back to shining the bar top. It was all business far above him, and he wanted none of it.

There was an order to it all.

—

“Okay, so this is bad,” the Doctor whispered, the edges of her mouth tightening imperceptibly. “Terribly bad. _Catastrophically_ bad.” She wrinkled her nose and took a sip of her pint, which she promptly let spill back into her glass. “ _Ugh_ ,” she said, screwing up her face in regret. Then she tilted her head. “Presumably.”

“How's that?” Graham asked, hands tucked into his armpits. The chill had gotten to him, too, Yaz thought, though the bar they’d stumbled across was plenty warm. The four of them huddled close in the sallow light of a corner booth. A newspaper was spread across half the table, lamenting the recent death of the American president.

“It’s East Berlin,” the Doctor said, eyebrows raised. “In _1963_. This period is incredibly temporally fragile, for all sorts of reasons, the first one being you lot came close to destroying yourselves every other week. Whatever we’re tracking, it’s nothing good.”

“Yeah, but—” Ryan shivered, “all this don’t mean it’s got to be someone like Krasko, does it? We don’t even know what we’re looking for. Or who.”

“No one ever visits the middle of the Cold War for a lovely bit of sight-seeing,” the Doctor pointed out. “And with all the difficulty the TARDIS had even trying to _land_ here—” She glanced up at them, troubled.

 _No, not troubled_ , Yaz thought, gazing at her over her own pint, untouched. _Worried_. More worried than she should have been. All this was nothing new. In fact, compared to Alabama, so far it was feeling much safer.

It was just that—somewhere between now and New Years, the parameters of what was safe had changed, somehow. If she only could figure out why, Yaz thought, not for the first time, she was sure the rest of it would fall into place. But the Doctor was as inscrutable as ever, even with her heart plastered all over her sleeve. Even with a reassuring smile tugging at her lips.

It had something to do with the Dalek.

But her musing—a familiar train of thought, these days, though not one that tended to lead her anywhere—was interrupted as Ryan leaned back against the booth, finally scraping his hat off his head.

“I dunno,” he said, the only one of them who seemed to be actually enjoying his drink. For his occasional faults, Yaz thought fondly, Ryan was infinitely adaptable. It was one of the things she liked best about him. “It don’t seem so bad, the Cold War. Not much different from the mess we left back home,” he muttered, a hair darker.

“That’s ‘cos you didn’t have to _live through it_ ,” Graham protested. He took a more tentative sip of his own drink. “Trust me, son. It weren’t no picnic.”

“I didn’t mean that, I just—” Ryan shook his head, avoiding Graham’s gaze. Yaz’s too, when she tried to catch it. “Well, feels like anywhere’s better than home right now, sometimes. That’s all.”

Yaz nodded in agreement, though she saw Graham’s face fall, just the slightest bit. The Doctor watched them all, unreadable.

“Nowhere’s perfect,” she offered, but it was subdued and a little bit strange. The warm lights above them made her eyes glint almost yellow. “Berlin’s no exception.” Her brow crinkled into something more expressive. “But it _is_ dangerous.”

“So, what’s our next move, then?” Yaz leaned in, moving her pint aside. She wouldn’t drink it, anyway. She hated this part, if she was being well and truly honest with herself. The stagnant, waiting, planning part. Being still only gave you time to get anxious about things—she’d known that since she was a little girl. As long as she was moving, she could be strong, confident, everything she needed to be, but the moment she stopped—

It had been a week since the Doctor had picked them up last. She’d been left with her thoughts for too long already.

If the Doctor caught on to the slightly desperate edge to her voice, she didn’t let it show. Her brow stayed crinkled as she tapped an absent finger against the side of her glass.

“Well,” she said, either on the verge of a brilliant idea or a terrible one, “we’ll just have to—”

She stopped dead. All the blood drained slowly from her face.

Yaz whipped her head behind her immediately, twisting in her seat, expecting danger. Instead, she locked eyes with an older woman, who was trailing a hand on the empty seat beside her. A half-empty glass occupied her other hand, the clear liquid swirling attractively.

“I don’t suppose this seat is taken?” she asked, smiling, though it made Yaz’s gut churn with unease. She had a warm, throaty voice and the biggest hair Yaz had ever seen—and her eyes were far older than her face. “Only it’s ever so crowded in here.”

Ryan glanced beyond Yaz to the dwindling patrons behind them and raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t look so crowded to me,” he said, chancing a look at the Doctor, clearly looking for direction. She didn’t even notice him, still frozen in place. Like she’d seen a ghost. Yaz’s pulse thrummed in her neck, deeply alarmed.

“Oh, you’ve got me,” the woman said, taking the seat anyway with that shark-like grin, placing her glass on a coaster. If she noticed the Doctor, chalk white and motionless, she didn’t let on. “I heard you talking, and I couldn’t help myself. I do so miss England. I’ve been away from home such a long time. You don’t mind, do you?”

There was a sincerity to her that Yaz didn’t believe for a second.

“Doc—” Graham said, brow crinkling into a frown. He made to touch her shoulder, but she cut him off before he could finish, suddenly vibrant where before she had been all but sucked dry. She swallowed painfully and extended a hand in the woman’s direction.

“Not at all,” she interrupted sharply. “Pleasure.” She pumped the woman’s hand, once, and withdrew quickly. She slid her hand back into her sleeve like it had been burned. “Say hello, everyone.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” the woman said, smiling enigmatically, all teeth and glinting eyes. She gazed down at the Doctor in a way that reminded Yaz of a tiger at mealtime. “And aren't you just adorable! Who dressed you?”

The Doctor’s mouth opened and then closed again. Her lips flattened in exasperation, uncharacteristically lost for words.

“Sorry, but,” Graham interjected, giving the Doctor a well-deserved side-eye, “who exactly are you?”

“Doctor River Song, dear,” the woman said, still smiling, and Yaz frowned, because the Doctor was still pressed into the back of her seat like she wanted to melt into it, lips tight together, there was _something_ — “And yourselves?”

“I’m Graham,” Graham said. “My grandson, Ryan, and that’s Yaz and the—”

“ _John_ ,” the Doctor interrupted again, straightening. “My name’s John. Smith. John Smith.”

“John?”

“Paperwork error. Call me Jane, if you like.”

The woman—Doctor Song, Yaz supposed—frowned, and then shrugged. But her eyes narrowed.

“Jane, then. What brings you to Berlin? I’m afraid I don’t meet many foreigners. The authorities here tend to take exception,” she leaned in with a whisper, eyebrows raising.

“Diplomats,” the Doctor lied, blandly. “On assignment.”

“On assignment.” Doctor Song rolled the words around in her mouth, still looking at them all a bit hungrily. Yaz shifted in her chair, wishing momentarily—stupidly—for her coat and her police vest. Something, anything, that would have lent her a bit of armour. “I see. That’s very interesting.” Doctor Song smiled again. “Especially since there won’t be a legitimate western diplomatic presence in East Berlin until at least the early seventies.”

“Oh, there we have it,” Graham muttered, and then winced as someone—all bets were off, really, Yaz thought, it could have been Ryan or the Doctor—kicked him in the shin.

Doctor Song tilted her head, not alarmed in the slightest by their rather flimsy cover. In fact, there was still a hint of something that might have been interest shining in her eyes. Yaz wasn’t particularly enjoying it. “I’ve never met spies from the north before,” she mused.

“Oh, no, we’re not—”

“Nope,” Ryan said, shaking his head.

“That’s really not—” Yaz tried.

“What’s so wrong with the north?” the Doctor asked, nose wrinkling.

“You’re not MI6,” she continued, glancing at them each in turn. “Or MI5, for that matter. You’re almost _certainly_ not UNIT—” and again the Doctor’s nose wrinkled in faint protest “—and so I’m afraid I’ve been left terribly confused, because, well.” Her smile grew a little more dangerous. “Who could possibly be sending spies behind the Iron Curtain that sound like they’re from Yorkshire, dressed in clothes from the early twenty-first century?”

Underneath the table, Yaz heard the unmistakeable whine of an energy weapon being powered up.

“Please,” Doctor Song said. Whatever forced ease had been driving the conversation before fled the table. The hairs on the back of Yaz’s neck stood on end. “I’m not stupid. In fact, I’m an archeologist. Who sent you? And _why_ ,” she leaned in to the table, gaze hardening, “are you following me?”

“I think, perhaps,” the Doctor said, very thinly, “there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding here.”

“Oh?” Doctor Song looked across at her coldly. The smile was gone, but Yaz wasn’t sure she could pinpoint when exactly it had left. “You have five seconds to illuminate me.”

“I won’t talk behind the barrel of a gun,” the Doctor said, something in her gaze growing colder as well. “Put it down.”

“I can hardly put it any lower,” Doctor Song said. “Who are you? You’re in charge, clearly.” A mocking edge entered her voice. “But just barely, I think. Flat team structure? Oh, don’t tell me you’re Time Agency.”

“These are my friends.” The Doctor spoke plainly, stripped of any outward panic, but Yaz caught it in her eyes. “And we didn’t come here for you. Believe me,” she said, and for just a moment, her voice shook. “We didn’t come here for you. So put it down.”

Something in her voice must have been convincing. Doctor Song looked to her with narrowed eyes, like the rest of them weren’t even there. The weapon beeped as it disarmed. There was a click, as it was reattached—Yaz assumed—to the holster underneath Doctor Song’s skirt. She was dressed like the other women they’d passed, a long skirt and blouse, though she had perhaps a few more buttons undone than Yaz thought was strictly proper, given the time period. Blending in, far better than they were.

“Why are you here, then?” Doctor Song leaned back against her chair in a mockery of relaxation. The slope of her neck was tense. “Because I’ll tell you right now, I think Berlin is full up with visitors from out of time. I won’t let you interfere.”

“Interfere with what?” The Doctor leaned into the table, interest glinting in her eyes. There was a kind of hunger there, too, Yaz thought. But she didn’t understand.

“I put away the gun. That means you answer my questions first.”

“I’ve already told you who we are.”

“I don’t care about your names.” Doctor Song glared across at her. “Who sent you?”

“Not the Time Agency.” The Doctor’s nose scrunched in disgust. “We’re—special rapporteurs. Sent by the Shadow Proclamation. The artron energy being emitted here is off the charts. That’s what we’re tracking—not you.”

“Artron energy,” Doctor Song said, not looking especially convinced. She took a sip of her drink, stone-faced. “And not, I suppose, the Fission Heart that was stolen from the Hayes Consortium three weeks ago?”

If there had been any blood left to drain from the Doctor’s face, it would have. Though the name meant nothing to Yaz, it was clearly significant.

“No,” the Doctor said, quietly. Something flashed in her eyes, quick, sharp. Disgust, Yaz thought, just barely curling her upper lip. “That’s _obscene_. Who would bring something like that here, of all places?”

Doctor Song tipped back the last of her drink and reached across for Yaz’s without a glance. She sipped at it coolly. “Someone who worships chaos,” she said, after a moment. She pursed her lips. “You really didn’t know what you were tracking?”

“Scout’s honour,” Graham said. “We’re, um. New at this,” he hedged.

Doctor Song’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, that’s terribly obvious. How did you ever think you were going to manage, walking around dressed like that? The secret police would have you pegged in a moment.” She tilted her head, gazing again at each of them in turn. Then she took in a deep breath, like she'd come to some kind of decision. “Come back to my place,” she beckoned, voice lowering. “I’m just upstairs. I’m sure I'll have something for all of you.”

The Doctor balked, her expression passing briefly through offense, indignation, and then finally landing on—a strange sort of weariness. Yaz sat back in her seat, confusion mingling with something trying hard to be jealousy. Whoever this woman was, she was certainly capturing all of the Doctor’s attention.

For a moment, she’d been certain the Doctor would refuse.

“Alright,” she said, her face unreadable again. Whatever it was in her eyes, it wasn’t something that Yaz understood. “We’ll come.”


	3. 3.

Berlin, Lexa thought, taking a slow sip of her drink as a gun clicked next to her ear, was becoming a bit of a drag.

“American, I presume,” she said, breathing in the smell of an expensive cologne. She closed her eyes, to make it more exciting. “Why don’t we sit and talk, like civilized people?”

The gun by her ear didn’t move.

She clicked her tongue, feeling a whisper of exasperation. “I’m not stupid enough to have what you’re looking for on me, so you might as well sit and have a drink.”

The bar she was inhabiting wasn’t well-regarded enough to provide any sort of protection—she was surrounded on all sides by criminals and vagabonds. The twentieth century was rather full of them, she was coming to realize. The disordered and disorderly. Unrest was as common as air, here. She breathed it in deeply, smiling.

“Fine,” she heard, a shaky breath. The cool touch of metal disappeared from her ear. When she opened her eyes, there was a boy sitting across from her, hair gelled back from his face, wide-eyed and pale. Well. Not a boy, perhaps, but barely old enough to drink. Too young to have seen much war. But not young enough, she thought, eyeing the tremor in his hand, to have avoided it.

“I was wondering when you’d find me,” she said.

“You’re not exactly inconspicuous,” he pointed out. He was sweating. She could see it, glinting sallow along his forehead.

“Still.”

“What you’re selling. We’re interested in procuring it.”

“By any means, clearly.” She leaned in, smiling at the way he shrank from her. “My price is a very reasonable one, I can assure you. You don’t need to resort to threats.”

“You’ve made it clear that your product is for sale to whoever wants it. That means you’ve dealt with the enemy.”

She shrugged. “And now I’m dealing with you. I sell to whoever wants to buy. That doesn’t make me your enemy, Mr—”

She paused, waiting. He looked back at her, uncertain. His eyes were drawn, fleetingly, to the marking around her wrist.

“Frank,” he said finally. “Lannigan.”

“Mr. Lannigan.” She took another sip of her drink. “Call me Lexa.”

“Miss Lexa,” he started, “I’m not sure you understand—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly.”

The humans, she was getting rather tired of.

“Your war is stagnating,” she said sharply. “Your whole world is balanced perfectly on the head of a pin. Neither can strike and hope to survive the retaliation. Well, you listen to me, Mr. Lannigan.” Her eyes met his own. “What I’m offering you will leave nothing left to retaliate with.”

Lannigan’s eyes widened. He was far too young for this job. She would have preferred a pragmatist, someone older, someone resigned to their fate. But he would do. He would have to.

“Why?” he asked, disappointing her. He swallowed. “You must have a stake in this war. Why offer it to the Reds first?”

“I offered it to whoever was faster.”

He swallowed again.

“ _Why_?”

She shook her head. “Never mind why. Do you want it or not?”

He played nervously with the watch on his wrist. It was old—far older than the rest of him, and slightly too big. Careworn.

“I’ve been instructed to procure it,” he said. “Whatever sum you’re asking for—”

“I don’t want money.” Lexa uncrossed her legs and readied to stand. “I want out.”

He frowned. “Out—”

“Of East Berlin.”

“You can’t—” he frowned. “You can’t get out yourself? I—”

“Can you do it?”

“Of course, but—”

“Then that’s the price. You’ll be wanting a demonstration, I assume.”

Lannigan drew back in his chair, half-alarmed.

“Not here.” Lexa smiled. “Tomorrow night. There’s a party at the Grand Hotel Berlin. I’ll leave an invitation for you.”

“Where?”

“Alexanderplatz. Tomorrow at ten.”

A bead of sweat dripped down Lannigan’s brow. “How will I—”

“You’ll see me.” She rose gracefully, gesturing at her empty glass. “I’ll leave my tab with you. Good night, Mr. Lannigan.”

He nodded. As she turned to go, she saw him run a sweaty palm through his gelled-back hair.

Lexa left the run-down bar, something nearing satisfaction simmering in her gut. She’d been here for far too long. _Finally_ things were moving again. Ivanov had been disappointing, but Lannigan would do. He would have to. And in the meantime—

Berlin beckoned. A bit of a drag, still, but Lexa had always been exceptionally good at keeping herself entertained.

Well. And it was a sight better than prison had been.

She breathed in deeply—and paused. Her eyes glanced down the lonely street to the canal. The wind whispered to her. She followed her feet, heels clicking on the cobbled stone, passing more bars, more rows of dingy flats and graffitied garages. She waited in the shadows, just for a moment, as a pair of Stasi passed, their torches blinding in the gloom. At the end of the street there was an alley. She ducked into it, a delicate hand trailing against old weathered brick, red shoes glinting in the street lamps.

A police box blocked her view, incongruous, looking rather like it had never been anywhere else. It smelled like the air before a storm.

 _Marvellous_ , she thought.

Lexa tipped her head back and laughed.

—

A few streets behind, Lannigan was fishing a few marks out of his pocket to pay for the woman’s drink. As he nervously adjusted his shirt collar, a tall figure in a bowler hat regarded him from the dingy window, its shoes black and shiny in the evening gloom.

“What do you think, old chap?” it asked its companion.

For a moment, in the shiny dark, the other figure only watched. Then it hummed thoughtfully. The sound was ever so faintly mechanical—but there was no one else to hear it.

“Well worth the wait,” it said, finally. “Well worth the wait, indeed.”

—

“ _Doc_ ,” Graham muttered into her ear as they trailed behind Doctor Song. The wind bit through his jacket. Berlin, he thought absently. He’d always wanted to visit—but maybe not quite like this. “Who the hell is she?”

“No one,” the Doctor said, the breeze whipping her hair off her face. Her voice was too light. Her cheeks were still too pale.

“But—” he tried.

“Is my outfit really that bad?” the Doctor hissed behind her to Yaz and Ryan, looking uncharacteristically insecure. She tucked a piece of flyaway hair behind her ear.

“What?” Yaz hissed back, nearly tripping over a piece of uneven pavement. “Since when do you care about what you look like?”

The Doctor opened her mouth, indignant, but before she could reply, Doctor Song ground them to a halt. She rested a hand on the door to a shabby, bricked up building.

“Right above the pub. Follow me,” she said. But her eyes flicked emphatically to the gun still holstered beneath her skirt. “Don’t try anything. I only just barely trust you, and only because you’re dripping with incompetence.”

The Doctor’s face grew more indignant, but again she said nothing. She tucked the same piece of hair behind her ear and beckoned them with a nod.

“Come on,” she said, looking grim. She drew in a resigned breath and stamped up the rickety staircase to the door. Graham frowned.

“Since when do we—” he tried again.

“Give it up, Gramps,” Ryan said, clapping him on the shoulder. His brow wrinkled. “She’s not talkin’.”

“I don’t like this at all,” he said, shuffling up the steps behind them. As he passed through the door, the air turned warm and sour, spoiled food and cigarette smoke up his nose. Spilled gin, soaked into the walls. He wrinkled his nose. “Not that anyone ever listens to me.”

He traipsed up another rickety staircase behind them, watching the sallow hall-light glint off Ryan’s jacket. His shoulders looked broader, these days. He barely looked at his feet as he walked up the steps, and when he finally did stumble, he shrugged it off and kept climbing.

Something in Graham’s gut gave a twist. Grace would have been proud of him. She would have been proud of him anyway, because of course she would have, but to see her grandson grow into the man Ryan was becoming—not just a good person, but a hero in his own right, with a new confidence, a new story for himself—

It was something special. Something special, and all he could do was watch. There was no one to share it with, anymore. He leaned heavily on the bannister as they climbed, wheezing a little but determined not to show it.

No one to share it with, but that didn’t make it any less important.

At the top of the stairs, Doctor Song fit a rusted key into a lock and pushed her way quietly into a threadbare flat. “In here,” she said, still watching them all carefully. Graham wasn’t quite sure what to make of her, just yet. So far, his further opinion had been stalled by the fact that she scared the pants off him. He couldn’t fathom why the Doctor was going along with it all, but there had to be a reason.

There usually was—even if she didn’t always tell you until right at the very end.

They shuffled out of their shoes at the entrance reluctantly, and filed awkwardly into the flat’s perfunctory front room as Doctor Song disappeared to make tea. She hadn’t deigned to switch on any lights, and the room remained dim with gloom. Out the flat’s only dingy, faded window Graham caught a glimpse of Berlin by night. Cement and brick and watery light, and in between, brief flashes of beautiful architecture, spires and pillars and gold that caught the light. A little glimpse of something that must have felt like a distant dream. And beyond it all—that wall. He remembered watching it fall down on the telly.

Well, and it hadn’t fallen, not really. They had all torn it down, hadn’t they. Brick by brick. Piece by piece.

“Doctor,” Yaz said quietly, as Graham joined them on the room’s cramped little sofa. It was a faded floral pattern, and its springs dug into the back of Graham’s thighs as he sat. The Doctor bounced on it, once, almost absently. She looked scattered. He wished he didn’t find it so alarming. “The plan?”

“While we’re here, my name’s Jane,” she whispered, more firmly than she looked. She bounced on the sofa again, which squeaked with the movement. “And I do have a plan, trust me, just got to—”

Doctor Song’s heels clicked on the cheap linoleum, approaching. A sallow light flicked on above them.

Her face twisted, and she bit off the rest of the words.

“Trust me,” she mouthed, raising her eyebrows.

Yaz pressed her lips together, looking unhappy. Ryan sank back against the sofa, half-shrugging. Graham frowned, hands twisting together in his lap. Doctor Song placed four smudged glasses and a bottle of vodka on the room’s coffee table and sat elegantly in the only chair across from them. She crossed her legs. She placed a hand on her thigh, near her gun.

“I’ll get you into some better clothes,” she said, smiling. It didn’t look especially nice. “But first, I have more questions.”

“Tea,” Yaz said, nose wrinkling at the coffee table’s meagre offerings. “Different than how I’ve seen it.”

Ryan shrugged again and poured himself a thumb. He raised an eyebrow at Graham in askance, but he shook his head. He didn’t even bother asking the Doctor, who always made an enthusiastic attempt to drink whatever was offered to her, and always, always regretted it.

“Let’s pretend for a moment that I believe you’re all special rapporteurs from the Shadow Proclamation,” Doctor Song said, staying perfectly still. Beside him, the Doctor bounced on the sofa again, restless. “Tell me what you know.”

“Just what we’ve told you,” Yaz said, frowning. She’d crossed her arms, leaning stiffly against the back of the sofa. “We tracked an energy signal here.” She tilted her head, glaring straight across. “And then we ran right into you.”

Doctor Song met her gaze easily, unperturbed by the hint of accusation. “I’m an archeologist, dear. Hardly the sort of trouble you’re trying to dig up.”

The Doctor straightened. She swallowed, once, but it was easy to miss in the dim light.

“But that’s not why you’re here,” she said quietly.

Doctor Song turned her strange gaze onto the Doctor instead. The Doctor’s upper lip trembled, but for a moment, she was still.

“I’m here on behalf of the Hayes Consortium,” she said finally, tearing her eyes from the Doctor. “I was hired by a branch of their security services and pastoral care, the Order.”

Ryan frowned. “Order of what?”

“Just the Order.” Doctor Song sniffed, a bit dismissively. “The Hayes Consortium is watched over by the Order. They believe that everything in the universe has a place. They abhor chaos. That’s why they collect and catalogue objects of mass destruction, like the Fission Heart. There was a break in, three weeks ago.”

The Doctor leaned in, hands fiddling in her lap. “What else was stolen?” she asked, frowning. Doctor Song shook her head.

“Too much to count. Weapons of all kinds, relics. Most of them not much more interesting than a laser gun, but a few—” She leaned back in her chair, considering them. Watching them all carefully. “Well. A few that pack quite the punch. Leftovers from wars the universe would rather forget.”

The Doctor stilled. Graham frowned.

“And,” Yaz shifted, “what exactly is a Fission Heart when it’s at home, then? And why did whoever stole it take it here?”

“To sell it, of course.” Doctor Song looked at her, a bit patronizing. “To sow chaos and destruction. A Fission Heart is a dangerous thing.” She smiled, eyes glinting hungrily. “It’s a weapon, similar to a warp star. Massive energy concentrated in a tiny, tiny crystal. They're not easy to acquire.”

“Because they're illegal and dangerous,” the Doctor said.

“Now you sound just like my husband.”

“Sounds like a smart man.”

“He’d certainly like you to think so.”

“What would he think of all this?”

There was an edge to the Doctor’s voice. If Doctor Song noticed, she didn’t show it. She leaned in, something glinting in her eyes.

“Luckily for all of us,” she said, enunciating deliberately, “he’s not here to care. Besides, I have no interest in the weapon, beyond delivering it back to the Consortium. I still have half my fee on retainer.” She smiled again, sharp. The edges of her never quite melted off, Graham thought, heart pounding despite himself. The Doctor sat tense beside him, wound tight, still twitching restlessly.

“We’ve got a mandate,” she said. “To protect history. Let us help you.”

“Not to be rude,” Doctor Song uncrossed her legs, hand straying from her gun. Apparently, she was convinced they weren’t a threat. “But I think we’re operating on slightly different levels here.”

The Doctor’s nose twitched in offense, but she pressed on.

“Look,” she said, and there was still a twinge of something reluctant in her voice, like she couldn’t quite believe she was saying what she was saying, “you can either work with us or work around us, because we’re not going anywhere until that Fission Heart is back where it belongs. Why wouldn’t we pool our resources, if it’s to stop the Earth from being destroyed?”

Doctor Song heaved a sigh, considering. She clucked her tongue.

“You wouldn’t last a day out there without me,” she conceded, ignoring their collective protest. “Alright. But if you get in my way, the Fission Heart will be the least of your problems.” She tilted her head to the flat’s only hallway, dingy and carpeted. The wallpaper was peeling. “You can sleep here. In the morning, I’ll make contact with my employer and we can go from there.”

“Right, sleep,” the Doctor said, eyebrows raised unconvincingly. “Yep. That’s—a thing. That normal humans do. Love it, sleep. Eight whole hours of absolutely nothing, brilliant, my favourite.”

“Yep,” Yaz said, lips tightening into a smile. She draped a hand over Ryan and Graham to land white-knuckled on the Doctor’s knee. “It sure is. We’ll tuck in, then, yeah?” Her smile grew strained. “Unless there’s anything else you’d like to discuss with us.”

Doctor Song looked back at her, expression drifting back into amusement. “No, I think we’re done here,” she drawled. “I’ve only one spare bedroom. First on the right. Otherwise, there’s the sofa, and the ground.” Her shark-like grin returned. “I’m afraid I sleep alone, unless any of you would care to convince me otherwise.”

With that, she rose from her chair and swung out of the front room, flicking the light off as she went. “And don’t use up all the hot water, or I’ll hang you from your toes,” she threatened genially, disappearing down the hallway. There was a gentle creak of the door to her bedroom, and another as it closed. They were left in silence, but for the odd siren in the distance. The couple underneath them, arguing. The sofa squeaking, as the Doctor bounced.

“Right, well,” she said, making to bounce again, until Yaz’s hand on her knee forced her back into the sofa seat. The unbearable squeaking stopped. “There we are. Sounds like a plan. You lot can take the bed and the sofa, I’ll just—”

“Hold on,” Yaz protested quietly, frowning in the gloom. “Aren’t you going to explain?” She glanced briefly in the direction of the hallway. “Who is she?” she asked in a hissing whisper. “And why won’t you tell her who you are?”

“Long story,” was all the Doctor said, far too breezily. “Timey-wimey. _Ooh_ , haven’t said that in a while. I’ll explain later, if there’s time.”

“There’s time right now,” Ryan pointed out.

“Nah,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “You lot should sleep. Lots to do tomorrow. East Berlin, at our fingertips. And now we know why the TARDIS brought us here.” Her face grew more contemplative. Her chin went to rest on her hand thoughtfully. “Still missing a few pieces of the jigsaw, I think. Well, I say jigsaw, I mean chess board, probably. But we’ve wandered into something a bit bigger than we thought, I reckon.”

She still wouldn’t look at them.

“Sorry about the cocktails,” she said mildly.

Yaz withdrew her hand, a bit coldly. Her lips were pressed together, still. Ryan only looked bemused, like he’d gotten stuck in the middle of something he was failing to completely understand. Graham sighed.

“Don’t worry about the cocktails, Doc,” he said, standing with a muffled groan. “And if it’s alright, I’m gonna lay claim to this sofa, so you lot had better get off it.”

They scrambled tiredly up, the four of them. The floor squeaked underneath them, along with the sofa springs. Ryan and Yaz eyed each other warily.

“I’ll take the bedroom floor, then,” Ryan said finally, either winning or losing the non-verbal confrontation.

“Yeah, alright,” Yaz said. She followed him to the hallway, a dark, watery shape. She paused at the crumbling arch, one hand on the wall, but didn’t say anything. After a moment, she slipped into the dark on Ryan’s heels.

The Doctor took off her coat and offered it to him, scrunched up into the approximation of a pillow. She smiled absently, eyes far away.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said, taking it.

“No problem,” she said, turning from him to face the window. She cut another watery silhouette, against Berlin’s night, just beyond the glass. “Goodnight, Graham.”

He tucked her coat under his head, wincing at the squeak of the sofa springs. It smelled faintly of engine grease and the air before a storm. He watched her for a moment. Her hands didn’t fidget. Her hair caught all sorts of light coming in from the window, reds and blues and that sallow, sickly yellow.

He frowned, shifting to try to get comfortable. He never quite succeeded.

“Goodnight, Doc,” he said, quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KHDFLKGDFSG HOW ABOUT THAT PREMIERE EH
> 
> i won't spoil of course, but oh my god, if this chapter is a little (or a lot rip) late today, that's completely why, i'm SHOOK AND I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL SUNDAY


	4. 4.

“Alright, what's gotten into you?” Ryan demanded, crossing his arms as they trailed behind Doctor Song into Berlin’s watery daylight. He looked surprisingly well-rested, for having slept on the floor. “You're bein' all—weird and mopey and—clumsy.”

“It’s nothin’.” The Doctor wrinkled her nose, straightening in a vain attempt to shrug off the very noticeable fact that she’d just tripped on an upturned cobblestone because her eyes had been fixed on the back of Doctor Song’s head.

“Is she your ex or something?” he pressed, glancing towards Doctor Song, just ahead of them. Yaz scowled.

“A _friend_ ,” the Doctor said, oddly insistent, striding forward. “Just a friend. Our paths used to cross, and now they don’t.” She swallowed. “Because they can’t.”

“Right, but,” Ryan matched her stride easily, looking hilariously smart in a pair of period-accurate trousers and a woolen jumper. “Sorry, actually I’m not following. Why can’t you just tell her who you are? For that matter, if you two are such good friends, how come she don’t recognize you?”

The Doctor didn’t stop. Her face scrunched into something trying hard not to be a scowl. Somehow, Yaz thought, she’d avoided being forced into less conspicuous clothing. Beneath her coat, her shoulders were hunched.

“I—” she said. “We’re almost there. No time for this now.”

“Doctor!” he protested, a bit too loudly. Yaz swatted him on the arm, but it was half-hearted. “ _Jane_ ,” he corrected. “Wait, actually though, what does that mean?”

“I told you,” she said, not looking any of them in the eye. The turn of her mouth was tense. “I was a man before.”

“Yeah, but like—”

Now Graham paused, torn from his thoughts. He’d been glancing up at the buildings as they passed.

“Hold on, I always thought you were joking,” he said.

“Why would I joke about a thing like that?” she said, twisting round to look at him, baffled. “I’m an alien. I can—I can change my face. My whole body. First time we met, I—I _told_ you lot. Total regeneration.” Her voice was a hissing whisper, so quiet the wind and the noises of the city almost tore the words from her mouth. Even as she spoke, she glanced nervously back up at Doctor Song. “I’ve changed, since we met last. And the last time we met—”

Even slightly cross, Yaz couldn’t help the twist in her stomach at the look on the Doctor’s face. It didn’t belong there.

“It was the _last_ time,” she said, something old and sad pulling at her brow. The wrinkle in the middle of her forehead had been a staple ever since they’d landed, Yaz noted gloomily. “I can’t disrupt the timeline.” She smiled back at them, a bit ruefully. “You understand, better than most, I think.”

Yaz thought of Prem’s watch, safely tucked away in her room on the TARDIS.

“How do you two know each other?” she asked. But whatever brief openness she’d imagined in the Doctor’s face slipped away, and a bland cheeriness slid back over her features, washed out in the daylight. She hadn’t slept, Yaz didn’t think. If she ever did. Yaz didn’t know that either, and the realization sat uneasily in the pit of her stomach.

“Long story,” she said, turning to face away. “Eyes and ears open, fam. We’re a long way from home.”

Ryan huffed, glancing to Yaz.

“You know,” he said, stepping carefully. “Honestly? I’m not sure we are.”

—

Alexanderplatz was a ruin. And, River thought, an archeologist’s field day.

It was a shame that she didn’t have the time.

She picked her way easily through the cobbled streets, Jane and her ragtag friends ambling behind. They were a nuisance, to be sure. But she’d learned over the years that it was better to keep potential problems close. At least if they were glued to her, she could keep them from interfering too badly.

“Woah,” the tallest one said. She heard the scrape of his feet as he approached the main square. “Bit different than they show on the telly.”

Where _had_ the Shadow Proclamation picked them up from?

“It was destroyed during the war,” she said, sticking to the edge of the square. She kept her eyes on the centre, on the people passing through. Ducking around the ruins. “There was an air raid shelter underneath it. It’s in the midst of being completely reconstructed. In a few years,” she said, feeling a familiar chill on the back of her neck, the absent ache of history, “it’ll look completely different.”

“And what are we doing here, exactly?” The other woman—what was her name, for that matter?—shifted, arms crossing. There was a brightness to that one, but she was almost unforgivably young. Glued at the hip to Jane, who seemed hilariously oblivious. It was almost funny, in an anecdotal way.

“I’ve been in touch with my employer,” she said, not bothering to mention exactly how. The specifics of it were a tad embarrassing, and had involved an early morning plunge into a very tepid duck pond. Not for the first time, she found herself wishing faintly for employers that were slightly less—odd. But that was the truth of the universe, wasn’t it? No one with any measure of wealth was ever anything less than perfectly strange. “My target’s made contact with a local intelligence operative. Someone wants to buy.”

Jane made her way closer, a ridiculous figure. She didn’t tower in the slightest, but her limbs were always pinwheeling, all elbows and knees. The movement was painfully familiar—but she couldn’t afford to indulge in petty sentimentalities. Not on a job like this. It was the money from this sort of employment that kept her afloat while she searched, while she wandered. To allow herself to be distracted in the midst of it all would have been painfully ironic.

“Target,” she said. “You mean, whoever stole the Fission Heart.”

“They didn’t steal it in the first place,” River said, still watching the centre of the square intently. Stasi roamed, ready to break up the slightest hint of—well. Anything, really. Black markets had a tendency of springing up in the rubble, but there were also just people, gathering, talking. Here, though, she thought, that absent ache again at the back of her neck, anything could be a crime. “I have reason to believe they acquired it after, on behalf of—”

She broke off, frowning.

“On behalf of whom?” Jane pressed, but there was movement, in the centre. A flash of red.

“Shut up,” she hissed. “Don’t move.”

In the shadows at the edge of the square, she whistled once. Twice. A duck that was not a duck began to amble casually to the centre, avoiding the tread of people’s feet with a mechanical competence.

“ _What_?” Jane mouthed, face scrunching into a pantomime of confusion.

“Let the duck do its work,” River hissed back, watching. She pressed an invisible button, hidden underneath the curve of her ear, and listened.

Eyes far in front of them, she watched.

—

Frank fumbled with his shirt collar, sweating, though the mid-morning sun was watery and not especially warm. He’d never done well with crowds. He’d never done well with—well, much of anything. He’d lasted about a week in basic training before they’d shuffled him off to a desk job, where he’d promptly fumbled that as well. If it weren’t for his brother—

He glanced down at the watch hanging off his too-small wrist.

If it weren’t for his brother—a lot of things.

 _I’ll make you proud_ , he didn’t say. He wasn’t sure it would have made any difference. In the darkest part of him, he wasn’t sure what he was doing would make anyone proud. But this was his one chance—his _last_ chance—to get anything right, before they shuffled him away on a discharge, before he sullied his family’s name and his brother’s legacy forever. He could be brave, for that. Maybe.

He tugged at his shirt collar again. Alexanderplatz was in ruins. He’d seen the pictures in the newspapers, of course, seen the grainy footage, remembered being a child, his ear to the radio as they described the carnage, but he’d never seen it before with his own eyes. A scar left on the world, all of it. And even as he was standing there, they were cleaning it up, rebuilding it, restructuring it, making it all shiny and new again.

How long would it take them, to forget it had ever looked like this? He wondered.

A flash of red, in the midst of the crowd. His breath sharpened. He was waiting, like she’d said to. She approached him without looking at him, eyes trained beyond him, to his left. She looked—normal. Beautiful hair, pinned back from her face. Nice clothes, but not too nice. But there was something in her face—something sharp. Something cold.

She brushed by, and dropped her purse. He knelt to help her pick it up and caught a hint of a smile beneath her hair. A hint of expensive perfume.

“The Grand Hotel Berlin,” she whispered, pressing something discreetly into his hand. “Seven. I’ll see you there.”

She took her purse from him and swept away. The whole encounter had taken less than ten seconds. Frank stood, swallowing thickly in anticipation, invitation hidden in the palm of his hand. He tucked it carefully into his shirt pocket.

He was going to have to find a suit.

—

Okay, so the bit with the duck had been a bit weird. But in retrospect, Yaz thought, adjusting her hair in the mirror, it probably wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d ever seen. Maybe not even the weirdest thing she’d seen this week.

Beside her, Ryan sighed and fiddled with his bowtie.

“What’s gotten into you now?” she demanded, glancing at him.

“Nothing,” he protested. But he looked away from her, back at the mirror. It was cracked in one corner, smudged and rusted at the edges. “Just—”

He fiddled with the bowtie again.

“Did Graham tie that for you?“ she asked, half a hunch.

“No,” he said. “The Doctor did, actually. Said she knew a thing or two.” Yaz waited patiently. “It’s stupid,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

“It is, though. It’s just—” He ducked his head, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. Still not looking at her, but that was okay. “My dad never taught me.”

She waited.

“And I wish he had,” he said, too quickly. “And I wish he were here to, but he’s not, ‘cos I left him.”

Yaz frowned. “You didn’t leave him,” she said. “You’ll be back before he even notices you’re gone.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be different.” His hand dropped. “I’ll be different, and he’ll be the same, and there’ll be this—distance.”

Yaz kept her frown, but thought for a moment. It was funny—for all she thought of herself as an anxious person, between the two of them, it was Ryan that tended to worry the most. About things that would never occur to her in amillion years.

“You didn’t even want to talk to him, a couple weeks ago,” she said gently. It wouldn’t do to push too hard, either.

“I know.” He wasn’t stupid. She could see it in his face, the uncertainty there. “I know, and I deserved better than I got, I really did. But if he’s trying, now—” He looked to her helplessly. “Shouldn’t I be there? He’s the only family I got left.”

“He’s not,” Yaz said firmly.

“You know what I mean.”

She did. Even if something about all of it was making her heart pound a bit fast in her throat. Real life felt so far away, when they were here. Inconsequential. When the Doctor dropped them off every week, she spent those seven days in a daze, barely concentrating, fixated on the adventure to come, desperate for that moment where real life dropped away. She missed her family, sometimes, sure. But there was nothing of her life in Sheffield that she yearned for, nothing that she felt like she was missing. None of it _mattered_.

Except, apparently, it did.

“Well, we’re here for you,” she said, pressing her lips together when it fell a bit thin. “No matter what. You’ll always have him, but you chose us. It don’t mean nothing, either.”

“Yeah, I know.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “Really, I know. Should we go?” He adjusted the bowtie one last time. “I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be. You’ll be brilliant.”

“Don’t like undercover. Don’t much like parties, either.”

“Tell you what, though,” she said, smiling as she elbowed her way out of the bathroom. “Bet the drinks’ll be free.”

—

The drinks were, in fact, free. Not that Yaz was drinking them, though she was holding a champagne flute in her hand, to sell the look. Doctor Song’s wardrobe had been full of all sorts of exciting things. In the end, she’d chosen something understated and elegant, a muted red that ended a few inches beneath her knees.

The Doctor—who tended to approach gender in the same way that most people approached a dirty sock on the pavement (with befuddlement, trepidation, and faint disgust)—had balked at Doctor Song’s offer of a dress, of course, and had raided her closet instead for a tuxedo. It was slightly too big in the shoulders, and there was a stain on the left arm. Nonetheless, she looked perfectly comfortable. She sipped gingerly at her own champagne, eyes on the crowd, smothering the occasional shudder of disgust. The hotel’s ballroom glittered all around them, burnished gold, painfully posh.

“Finally got you to some cocktails,” she said to Graham, eyebrows raising. “Don’t say I never bring you anywhere nice.”

“Oh, yeah, right lovely, this,” Graham said, still looking fairly pinched. “A party for a corrupt communist administration smack dab in the midst of the Cold War, just my idea of a relaxing evening.”

There were an awful lot of Stasi about, Yaz couldn’t help but notice. Not all of them in uniform, either. But she could see it in the set of their shoulders, the jut of their chins. The weapons hidden not-so-discreetly in their jackets. This party had the air of a setting that expected trouble.

“Well, if it’s not yours, then it is mine,” Doctor Song said, eyes glittering. Out of all of them, she blended in the best. She was also, Yaz thought, a bit unkindly, enjoying it all a little bit too much.

“What exactly is the plan, once they both get here?” Yaz asked. “Why are they meeting here in the first place? She could have handed off the weapon wherever or whenever she felt like it.”

Doctor Song glanced at her. “The buyer has no guarantee of the weapon’s usefulness. They’ll meet, discuss terms. And then—” She swallowed. One eyebrow raised slightly. “A demonstration.”

“It’s not a one off, then, this Fission Heart.”

“Unfortunately, it’s rechargeable,” she said. “And whatever she sets off tonight is likely only a tenth of the weapon’s full capabilities. If anyone on Earth gets their hands on it—”

“Nuclear deterrence will be a thing of the past,” the Doctor said, quietly alarmed. She took another reluctant sip of her champagne. “Human history will be rewritten.” But her eyes narrowed. “You said she. Who? The red-head?”

Something in Doctor Song’s expression soured.

“Prisoner 000873,” she said. “Lexa Hardin.”

“That’s a Stormcage identifier,” the Doctor breathed.

Doctor Song’s lips thinned. “Yes,” she said crisply.

“So you know her.”

Her gaze snapped to the Doctor, eyes narrowing. “How could you _possibly_ know—” she started.

“Lucky guess,” the Doctor said, warily. She leaned back, into the table they were clustered around. “Maybe I do my homework.”

“Maybe,” Doctor Song’s eyes glinted, “you should stay focused on your own business, _Jane Smith_.” She swallowed. “She’s not a friend, if that’s what you’re implying. Our paths crossed occasionally. Then she got swept up in a cult. It started in the prison, an old sect of some old religion. They worship chaos.” She glanced out into the crowd. “They believe it’s their sworn duty to cause as much of it as possible.”

“And they’re at odds with this Order, then,” Ryan said.

“Exactly.”

“Big ideas,” Graham said. “Seems a bit silly to bring it back down to something as small as Earth.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Doctor Song said, stepping away from the able. She placed her glass down. “But not yet. It’s not seven. Until then,” and she glanced over her shoulder at them, smiling wickedly, “I’m going to dance.”

“River,” the Doctor said. “Doctor Song,” she corrected, shifting uncomfortably. “The buyer. The target. What will happen to them?”

Doctor Song gazed back at her, calmly. “I’m going to do my job,” she said. “My job is to return the Fission Heart to the Consortium. Everything else,” she continued lightly, “is inconsequential.”

“But you won’t kill them,” the Doctor said, oddly intense. “Either of them. You won’t allow the demonstration to happen either.”

“Are you asking me if I care remotely about the lives of a bunch of corrupt government officials? The men here are monsters. They’d sooner send their own families to the gulag than give up the power they have. This is an administration that kills people for _breathing_ in the wrong direction.”

“We’re going to save them though,” the Doctor insisted. “We’re going to save them anyway, because it’s right.”

Doctor Song stared at her for a long moment, eyes glittering. Something passed between them that Yaz didn’t understand.

“You know who you remind me of?” she said, finally. “My second wife.”She spun elegantly on her heel and stalked off in the other direction.

The Doctor's nose wrinkled in frustration.

“ _Why_ ,” Yaz heard her mutter, “does this keep happening to me?”

Yaz watched Doctor Song go, not unrelieved to have her gone.

“Well,” Graham interrupted the tense silence she’d left in her wake. “I don’t know about you lot, but if we’re not budging until seven, then I’m going to find some canapés. Comin’ along, son?”

He looked to Ryan. There was something a bit careful in his gaze.

“Get in,” Ryan said. “You know I am. Cheers, you lot.” He nodded to Yaz, half a question. She shook her head. She was too nervous for canapés.

She put her drink down on the table, eyes catching for a moment on the way the dim light caught the bubbles. There was a live band, at the front of the room, a concert pianist and a proper set-up. It was all very elegant.

The Doctor sighed, just a whisper of a breath.

“Aren’t you tired of it, yet?” Yaz asked. “Pretending to be someone you’re not.”

Her eyes went to Yaz. “I—” she started to protest.

“Don’t say anything.” Yaz plucked the Doctor’s glass out of her own hand and put it on the table. “She’s all you can think about, it’s obvious. Only thing that’s not obvious is _why_. What’s so important about her?”

The Doctor only looked back at her, a bit helplessly.

“Yaz,” she tried.

“Oh, come on,” Yaz said, and she could tell herself later that it must have been the frustration talking, the imminent fear of time itself unravelling, but before she could think too much about it, she'd wrapped her hands around the Doctor's waist and was pulling her away, across the ballroom’s floor. The Doctor blinked, surprised, but placed her arms at Yaz's shoulders on instinct. “Focus on how terrible a dancer I am instead.”

“Ah, slow dancing's easy,” the Doctor said, already happily distracted, “you just sort of—move. Slowly. I prefer a foxtrot, myself. Ooh, or the _Charleston_ —”

“Wrong decade,” Yaz pointed out, fighting back a laugh. “I didn't know you could dance.”

The Doctor brought an arm back briefly to tap the side of her nose. “I'm full of surprises.”

“Oh really? I thought you were an open book.” She felt her smile turn a hair bitter and smothered it, quickly. “Tell me honest,” she said, deflecting. “Are we gonna get in trouble for this?”

The Doctor blinked at her again, confused, and Yaz waited tiredly for her to remember that she had a gender. “Oh!” she said, cottoning on, finally. “No. Well—no. Probably fine. It's dim in here, and people aren't payin' much attention to us. Besides, the past is always a little more progressive than you think it is. If you know where to look.” She smiled, and it was fond and a little sad. “People have been dancin' for centuries.”

That, Yaz supposed, must have been true. Probably the Doctor knew better than most, because she’d had the chance to _see_ it.

This was why Ryan was wrong about it all, though, she thought, the Doctor warm and close. Much closer than she usually was, even if her eyes were focused now on the crowd beyond Yaz’s shoulder. She smelled like the air before a storm.

This was one of the moments where it all fell away. There was nothing waiting for her back home that could come even close to this, and that was the painful truth of it.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Doctor Song said, appearing without a sound over the Doctor’s left shoulder, “but I’m afraid we’ve got trouble. Where are the boys?”

Yaz scowled internally, but kept her face smooth. She let go of the Doctor’s waist with reluctance.

“Canapés,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t think the Americans are the only ones interested in the weapon. I think our poor buyer has also been a little less careful with his dealings than he should have been.” Doctor Song’s mouth was tight with chagrin. “I just had a very lovely waltz with a British intelligence agent. And then a Russian one. And then a French one. It’s too dangerous to stay here, we’ll be made.”

“So where are we going?” Yaz hissed, trailing on her heel as they stalked towards the canapés. “We have to intercept the buyer before he gets his hands on the weapon.”

“We have to intercept the _weapon_ before it gets used,” the Doctor corrected gently. “But she’s right. How are we gonna do that if we’re not here?”

“I’ve placed a duck in the entrance, we’ll know when they both arrive. They won’t be dealing with each other out there anyway. It’ll be a hotel room. I know how she operates. Now come on,” Doctor Song said, glancing over her shoulder. “Keep up.”

The Doctor shook her head, nose wrinkling, but she kept up, a cool hand wrapping around Yaz’s forearm.

“Go along for now,” she said quietly. She smiled at her briefly. “And thanks for the dance.”

 _Anytime_ , she almost said, but she was lead along before she could.

They picked up Graham and Ryan at the canapé table and discreetly nudged their way out of the ballroom, feigning a trip to the powder room. The hotel was as grand as it’s name suggested. As they passed, almost too quickly to have a proper look, Yaz caught marble busts and intricately painted wallpaper in the hallways, burnished gold accents. Remnants of another time, another sort of life.

“This hotel will be demolished in a few years,” the Doctor whispered in her ear almost absently as they waited in the stairwell for a group of loudly chatting guests to pass. “They’ll build a carpark on top.”

One the group had passed, they traipsed across to a back access corridor, a narrower staircase that was only used by the staff.

“No lift, then,” Ryan said, deadpan. “Yeah, alright.”

They climbed. Doctor Song, at least, seemed to know where she was going.

“She’ll go high,” she said. “So if things go wrong, she can jump, but not be followed.”

“Who _is_ this woman?” Graham wondered.

“A psychopath,” she said, without any fear. “Someone without remorse, and without empathy, so be _careful_. The last thing I need are incidentals caught in the crossfire.”

“Incidentals,” Graham mouthed behind him, offended, but Yaz only sighed, glancing again at the Doctor, her eyes glued to Doctor Song. Was this what if felt like, she wondered in turn. Was this what she looked like? Pathetically stuck on someone who would never look at you the way you wanted them to.

It was painful to watch.

“This way,” Doctor Song said, directing them out of the staff hall. They stumbled out into another dimly lit hallway, wine-red carpet, gold lining the walls. “There’s roof access. I should be able to—”

She paused, hearing something the rest of them clearly didn’t.

“Into the cupboard.” There wasn’t even a hint of panic in her voice. She swung open the staff cupboard beside them and hustled them all inside. Yaz muffled a sneeze as the heavy smell of bleach filled her nose.

“There’s not enough room,” Graham protested. Ryan winced as an elbow caught his gut. “We’ll have to find somewhere else.”

“No time!” Doctor Song hissed, as Ryan and Yaz shuffled as far back into the cupboard as possible, into the shadows. Ryan tugged Graham back with them, hunching down into the cleaning supplies with another wince. “Get back, you three! And as for you,” she said, regarding the Doctor, “we're going to have to make do, as it were.” And without another word, she drove the Doctor back against the wall and kissed her, just as the cupboard door was wrenched open with a squeak. The Doctor's hands flailed in surprise, and Yaz thought she heard a muffled wail of protest. Doctor Song only turned her head in cool appraisement, halo of hair obscuring the Doctor's face. It was a clever ploy, Yaz had to admit. All whoever was looking in would be able to see would be the waistcoat and the trousers.

“Do you mind?” she asked, raising her chin, expression terribly haughty.

There was the sound of a throat being cleared.

“Excuse me, _fraulein_ ,” the voice said.

“Sorry, darling,” she said, once the housekeeper had left. She removed her hand from the Doctor’s lapel. “I do usually ask first. Desperate measures.”

“Right,” the Doctor said, looking a bit like maybe she wanted to die. Or burst into tears. It was an unfamiliar expression, on her face. “Right, yeah. Of course. I'm just—I’m gonna—”

She turned on her heel and fled.

Doctor Song turned to the rest of them, frowning.

“I’m not sure how to take that feedback, honestly,” she said.

The remaining three of them looked amongst themselves.

“Er,” Ryan said, half-frowning. He uncurled himself and stood. “Maybe, um. Maybe we should take this one, Grandad.”

He glanced at him in surprise. “You think so?”

“Yep.” Ryan took him by the sleeve of his jacket. “Come on.” He met Yaz’s eyes over Graham’s head, motioning to Doctor Song with his chin in a frankly untranslatable gesture. Yaz frowned in reply, but they were off, trailing behind the Doctor.

“Bit of a mess, your friend,” Doctor Song said in the remaining silence. “What’s her problem, exactly?”

“I think she’s _brilliant_ ,” Yaz said, scowling. Of course, they’d left her alone with her. She had all the luck, this go round. And for that matter, she had no idea what the Doctor’s problem was, and that made it all the worse.

Though she was starting to have some suspicions.

“Of course you do,” Doctor Song said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.” Doctor Song closed the door to the cupboard, closing them in again. She sat gracefully, skirt fanning out around her, and patted the ground beside her. “Go on, then. It’s not seven yet.”

Yaz eyed her hand on the floor warily, already sick of the dust and the sallow, swinging light above them. She didn’t like cramped spaces, but she wasn’t about to admit it to _her_.

She sat.

“You’ve got it wrong, you know, Doctor Song,” Yaz said quietly, smothering her resentment like a grownup. “We’re just friends. It'd be like—well. It'd be like fallin' in love with the sun.”

To her surprise, Doctor Song sighed. “I know the feeling. Call me River.”

“Do you?” Yaz frowned.

“Of course.” But she didn’t elaborate.

“And I don't think she sees me like that. I sort of thought—well, for a while I thought maybe it was just that she didn't see anyone like that, but—” She glanced away, avoiding River’s gaze. “I was wrong, I think.”

River hmmed thoughtfully.

“She’s an odd one, you friend. She—” And she swallowed. “She reminds me of someone, if I’m honest,” she said, soft like Yaz had never heard her before. Yaz hadn’t thought her capable, honestly.

“Who?”

“I'm looking for somebody,” she said, quietly, after a moment. “Only it's taking me a while, you see.”

“How will you know when you've found them?”

“Oh,” her smile deepened. “I'll know. He's quite impossible to miss.”

Something in Yaz desperately wanted to know.

“Who is he?” she asked, too quietly.

River’s voice had gone dreamy. It didn’t quite suit her, only Yaz supposed it actually did.

“He walks in eternity,” she said. “He burns like a thousand suns.” She chuckled unexpectedly. “And he’s got the most _dreadful_ fashion sense.”

“Alien?”

“Time Lord.”

The back of Yaz’s neck prickled.

“What’s a Time Lord?” she asked.

“Oh, never you mind,” River said. There was a prickle to her again, as though she’d realized the mask had dropped and she was picking it up off the ground again. “If you don’t know, then you’re probably lucky. But it all makes him very hard to find. I usually start by looking for the biggest disaster and heading straight for the centre of it.”

Yaz shivered.

“I know what you mean,” she said.

River looked straight at her, for what felt like the first time. She wasn’t as hard around the edges as she seemed. In the soft, yellow light, there was almost something kind about her face.

“You know,” she said. “I really think you might.” She smiled ruefully.

“How long have you been looking?” Yaz drew her knees up to her chest. The hair on the back of her neck was still stood all on end. There was something—

“Oh, ages,” River said quietly. “Sometimes it feels like I’ll be looking forever.”

“But he’s worth it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What’s his name?” Yaz whispered, drawing lines between dots that she hadn’t thought existed.

The silence hung there for a moment, dust in the sallow light.

“He’s called the Doctor,” River said. “And he’s my husband.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dsfhglkjfdsgfdg y'all i am SO tired never leave anything until the last minute is my sage and desperate advice 
> 
> ANYWAY we're nearing the end of this adventure and I'm sorry so much is crammed in here lmao but I hope you're still enjoying and I'd love to hear what you thought!


	5. 5.

Ryan and Graham chased her all the way to the roof, emerging from a service door into night that was thick and heavy. Warm floodlight lit the concrete, Berlin twinkling underneath them.

“Doc,” Graham said, panting, hands on his knees. She had her back to them, head leaning forward into weathered brick. Her shoulders were hunched, shuddering. “Alright, cockle? Are you—”

Ryan took a step forward and paused, feeling suddenly, horribly, out of his depth.

“Mate,” he ventured. “Are you crying?”

“ _I'm not crying_ ,” she insisted, but she wouldn't move her face away from the wall. “Look, could you just—could you just leave, and then come back, and we'll all pretend like none of this ever happened?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking that’s not what’s gonna happen,” Ryan said, braving a step closer. He shot a look to Graham, next to him, who only shrugged unhappily. “Doctor—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she warned, a bit soggily. “It’s—it’s fine.”

“Don’t seem that fine to me,” Graham said. “Doc, come on. What’s going on?”

“ _Nothing_.”

“You don’t do this, mate,” Ryan said, inching ever closer. “You don’t—who is she? What’s wrong?”

“She—”

Ryan was finally close enough to grasp her shoulder, and he reached out tentatively as she turned, red-eyed. She stared at him for a moment, frozen.

“She’s my wife,” the Doctor finally admitted, her voice cracking. “And she’s dead.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that.

“What?” he boggled.

“Oh, Doc,” Graham said quietly, behind him.

She shuddered in a breath and slid down the wall, one hand sliding through the top of her hair.

“It’s fine,” she said again, horrifyingly. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have run off. I’ll—”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Ryan asked, but she only looked up at him helplessly, hair a mess, bleary-eyed.

“Timelines,” she said, and wasn’t that a story that needed more context. “We met back to front. I can’t risk—” She swallowed painfully. “I thought—in and out, a bit of cooperation—”

“That’s horrible.”

“This is _important_ ,” she insisted.

His bowtie felt heavy around his neck, suddenly. “You could have told us,” he said. She shook her head, sniffling.

“Sorry,” she said again, straightening, already shoving the messy parts of herself behind that mask. “We can talk about it later. We should go back and get them. It’s nearly time.”

“I’ll do it,” Graham volunteered, something passing over his face. He met Ryan’s gaze firmly. Ryan frowned, confused. “Be right back.”

Ryan raised a hand, half in protest, but he was already gone. He felt momentarily bereft.

“A right mess, all of this,” he muttered at the swinging door. He glanced down at the Doctor. She’d loosened her bowtie, and it hung half-undone down her front.

“Sorry,” she repeated, and it would have made him cross—but he only felt sorry for her. And there were questions burning in his chest, but it felt like the wrong moment. It felt like it would have been cruel, almost.

He sat down beside her instead.

“It's all sort of—awful, isn't it,” he said, gazing out over the roof. Feeling a pang of something that had never felt like homesickness, before. “Big wall through a city. All those families cut off from each other.”

“It won't last forever,” she reminded him, following his gaze. He wondered if she was seeing the same things he was. She had a bit of a longer view, probably, he thought. Maybe she could see everything it had been, everything it would be, as well.

All he could see was grim and grey and ragged at the teeth.

“In less than thirty years, they'll be tearing it down,” she said softly. Her voice was stronger now, even still. She dragged a sleeve across her face. “Reuniting. Europe in pieces, whole again.”

“Yeah, but it don't last though.” He kicked his feet against the roof, a stupid, useless sort of frustration bubbling up, making his chest feel tight. “Less than thirty years go by before it's all fallin' apart again. You know the future, Doctor. Does it—” He swallowed. “Does it ever stick? Does anything we do even matter?”

He watched her frown from the corner of his eye. “Well, I don't _know the future_ , to start with. Very few things are set in stone, Ryan Sinclair. Life will treat you much better if you can hold on to that.”

“You know that's not what I mean. I just—” He gestured into the empty night. “What's the point? All this gets fixed up, but something else breaks. The world gets better, maybe, but—but does it, really? I don’t—”

She took in a long breath beside him, thinking. More like herself, and it should have been a comfort. “You might have a point,” she allowed. “When this war ends, when all the walls get torn down, when communism gets snuffed out, all sorts of nasty things rise from the ashes to fill the space. Nationalism, extremism, isolationism. Fascism. Terrorism. Lots of isms, in your century. I won't pretend like it'll be an easy ride for you lot. I won't pretend like there are simple answers, 'cos there are none. You humans, you—you just stumble collectively from one crisis into the next, it feels like sometimes.” She took his hand and squeezed it, still looking out into the city. “But it's not all despair and hatred and apathy. There's always people trying to do the right thing, if you know where to look. And it's not all written in stone, I promise.” She smiled. “You can change, all of you. You can look back at all of this, at all of what came before it, and decide to become something different. That's how you got a lot of the world you live in today, you know.”

“Yeah, but—” He struggled for a moment, frowning. “Isn't that sort of the problem? The world I live in is fallin' apart at the seams.”

“If it's any consolation, almost every human I've ever met has said the same thing.” The smile turned a bit wistful. “I don't have any black and white answers for you, Ryan. History is impossible to untangle from the present, but it's also impossible to untangle from itself. What comes after this is not— _inevitably_ better. Some things about the world improve. Other things get worse. It goes on like that, forever, you keep messing up, and learning, and then forgetting. The ills of humanity don't ever get fixed. But that doesn't mean we stop trying. It doesn't mean we get to just give up. It means we have to help where we can. It means we have to be kind until our last breaths. This world isn't free to abandon just because it might not all work out in the end.”

She gazed out over the roof, settled back into herself. There was an odd look in her eye. For a moment, he wondered if maybe she’d just reminded herself of the same thing.

“The wheel keeps turning, Ryan,” she said quietly. “But it doesn't turn without you. D'you want to know what keeps me hopeful about humanity? What keeps me from throwing in the towel?” She smiled at him, and her eyes were very old. “It's all a choice. You can choose to build a wall, you can choose to tear it down. And sometimes—you do.”

Her eyes turned back on the city. Ryan followed her gaze, heart thumping in his throat.

“You’re right,” he said, throat dry, frustrated with himself. He’d meant to comfort her, and instead she’d turned the whole thing round. But that was the Doctor at the end of it all, wasn’t it. Deflecting everything you threw at her, everything you asked of her, everything you offered her. “And are you—are you really okay?”

It weren’t even close to the questions he really wanted to ask, but there was still something vulnerable in the turn of her mouth and it frightened him. The details could wait.

The details, something dark and quiet in the back of his head whispered, could always wait when it came to the Doctor.

“Course,” she said, reassuringly. There were too high spots of colour on her cheeks now, blotches of red, the only concession. She swallowed. “I’m fine. Too many bubbles. I don’t like champagne.”

He frowned. “Why’d you drink it, then?”

She frowned right back at him, perplexed. “I was nervous. I’m _blendin’ in_.”

He leaned his head against the brick, already feeling far too tired. There’d been an awful lot of steps on this adventure so far. The rest of them forgot, sometimes, he thought. How much harder it was for him to do the things they didn’t even have to think about.

“We’re not very good at it,” he said.

“No,” she conceded. “Maybe not.”

“But we’re gonna try anyway.”

“Of course.”

“Hey,” he said, struggling to his feet. The Doctor lent him a cool hand to grasp, and he took it gratefully. “Speaking of—how come your secret wife gets a gun?”

Her face twisted.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” she protested. “Marriage is all about picking your battles, Ryan. Trust me.”

“I’m still not—” he started.

The door to the roof blew open with a sharp bang and a well-dressed man with a blaster burn right through his chest slumped to the floor.

River Song was just behind him, gun glinting in the sallow light, hair blowing in the breeze. Her face was cold.

“The duck never picked them up and I’ve got foreign agents crawling up my leg. We’ve been made,” she said. “Time to go, I think.”

—

Outside the Grand Hotel Berlin, two silhouettes had mustered in the shadows.

“Old chap,” one bowler-hatted figure said to another as they watched the man called Frank Lannigan be gently man-handled into an unmarked 1947 Buick. Such was the way of things. “Do you think perhaps now—”

“Events are still moving, dear fellow,” the other one said, an unsettlingly life-like but nevertheless entirely mechanical duck cradled in its arms like a child. “We’ll convene closer to the end.”

“Quite so, but—”

It wasn’t programmed for disapproval. Nevertheless—

“Quite so,” it said. “And you’d do well to remember it.”

—

“ _Out_ ,” River said sharply, holding the staff door open to the alleyway beyond, her gun still locked and loaded in the same hand. “Out, out, there’s no time!”

“The hand-off,” the Doctor was protesting, shoving Ryan, Yaz and Graham in front of her in turn as she lingered.

“A trap!” River snapped. “The hand-off was a ruse, or at least it became one. But the demonstration—”

The Doctor’s face drained of colour. She froze to the spot, brow creasing.

“ _No_ ,” she said. “River, this hotel—”

“Is going to be demolished to make way for a carpark in less than five years anyway, the fabric of history—”

“There are people inside!”

River’s eyes gleamed.

“Terrible, inconsequential people,” she said. “And most of them have drained to the reception room anyway. It’s too late. We can’t stay. I certainly can’t disarm a warp star in less than five minutes and that is _all that we have_.”

The Doctor stayed planted, scowling. “We have to try and stop it,” she insisted. “ _River_ —”

“ _Stop calling me that_ ,” she snapped, dragging the Doctor out of the doorway by the dangling ends of her bow-tie. Yaz stumbled back a step to make room, quietly horrified. “If we stay, we’ll all die. If we leave, we stand a chance of intercepting the hand-off and preventing the world from being ripped apart, _I_ happen to think that’s the superior option!” She heaved a breath, shuddering. “Things don’t always go to plan, but you still have to _choose_. Now come on!”

She dropped her grip on the Doctor, shaking her hand as if burned, and stalked off down the alley at a pace.

“Quickly!” she shouted behind her. “We have to remove ourselves from the blast radius!”

In her wake, the Doctor shuddered with what Yaz only obliquely recognized as rage. She glanced behind her at the door, paralyzed by indecision. Blinded by panic.

Yaz took her hand, guilt sliding thickly up her throat. It galled her to admit it, but—

“She’s right,” she said softly. “Isn’t she.”

“There is _always_ a way,” the Doctor insisted, shaking. But there was defeat behind her teeth. Yaz could see it, coming up behind her eyes.

“Come on,” Yaz said, pulling her along, tripping behind Graham and Ryan. “Please, Doctor.”

“Fine,” she muttered. But she pulled her hand out of Yaz’s grasp, still white with anger, and stalked ahead of them, shoulders hunched up to her ears. She cut a thin, striking silhouette down the middle of the alley, feet catching in leftover puddles.

“ _River_!” she shouted, striding to catch up.

Ahead of them, River paused, hair bobbing with the motion as she turned, eyes flashing.

“I _told_ you—” she hissed. But her gaze caught above them, just beyond them, and her mouth parted in dismay. “Back!” she shouted. “Quickly!”

Behind them, the ballroom went up in a flash of light. Yaz clapped her hands over her ears, feeling heat streak across her face, her bare legs. For a blinding, terrifying second, the whole world went white.

Then it was over, and she was bent down around her knees, ears ringing, dress singed.

But unhurt.

She breathed raggedly for a moment, waiting as her hearing returned in a reluctant fit and start. The alleyway cleared with her vision. Graham was picking Ryan up off the ground, similarly singed. The Doctor and River were pressed up against the wall. And behind—

She turned dizzily, dread sitting low in her stomach.

“Oh, no,” she breathed. The Grand Hotel Berlin was burning.

Well. What was left of it.

“Oh my days,” Ryan whispered, dazed. Already, she could hear sirens in the distance. “We were almost—”

The Doctor’s breaths were harsh, behind her. When Yaz turned, she was still pressed up against the alley’s wall, dismayed. Dismayed, and—

Yaz frowned as her breathing grew more ragged.

“Something’s—” she slurred, knees half-buckling before she caught herself.

“ _Jane_ ,” Yaz said sharply, moving in closer. Her legs felt like they’d been scalded, but they still moved just fine. She took an elbow.

“Drinks,” she wheezed, tapping Yaz’s other arm insistently, “ _Yaz_. _Yaz_ , did you have a drink?”

“No,” she said, “No, of course not.” She looked up at Graham and Ryan, circling in. “You?”

“Well, yeah, “ Graham said, alarmed, “of course, but—”

River swore into the pavement, barely sparing a glance for the smouldering ruins of the hotel’s first floor.

“We’ve been made,” she hissed. “Right from the start, _stupid_ —”

“But the rest of us ain’t poisoned,” Ryan protested, nearly shrill with panic. “Right?”

“No,” the Doctor said, clinging to coherence stubbornly. She reeled away from the wall, hunched over. “Which means—”

“Which means what?” River demanded.

“Which means—oh, _what is that_?” The Doctor’s face scrunched, a hand white-knuckled around her middle. “Something—organic. Not a poison, or a toxin! What year are we in again?” She leaned into the wall, gasping. “Whatever it is, it's tearin' apart cells like there's no tomorrow. You know, it's funny,” she said faintly, knees buckling again. “I was poisoned the last time I was in Berlin, too.”

“Jane,” River said, frowning. “Wait, what do you mean, last time?”

“Never mind that,” she gasped, sliding slowly down the wall of the alley, grasping blindly for Yaz's hand. “Ooh, you know what this is?” She breathed in shallowly through her mouth, tiny gasps, sour with chagrin. “ _Aspirin_. Which is bad, ‘cos it means whoever is on to us is _really_ on to us.”

River's frown deepened, and she knelt down beside Yaz and Graham.

“Aspirin,” she said, gaze hardening. “Is a medicine.”

“ —which I happen to be deathly allergic to,” the Doctor corrected, squeezing her eyes shut, forehead slick with sweat in the grim light of the alleyway. “But don't worry about me, I'll be fine, just need a nap and—and maybe a bit of charcoal to nibble on.”

“Charcoal?” Ryan said, fingers digging into Yaz's shoulder. “Doc—I mean, Jane, you can’t—”

“I don't understand,” River said, still kneeling in the dirt with the rest of them. Her gaze was cool and her words were calm, but there was an undercurrent of something sharp behind it all. Concern, locked away and trapped. “Even if this were an allergy, the symptoms should have manifested ages ago.”

“Excellent metabolism,” the Doctor said, crushing Yaz's hand in her own. “Flimsy digestive system. Rubbish kidneys, I'll tell you that much, I have such terrible luck with them—”

“Jane,” River said, reaching for her, terrible suspicion drawn across her face.

“Penny in the air,” the Doctor said, as River’s hand closed around her wrist, as two fingers found her pulse. “And the penny,” she breathed, eyes rolling into the back of her head, eyelids fluttering closed as River froze.

“ _No_ ,” she said, in a very small voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DFJKSGHLDSF


	6. 6.

“ _Karl_ ,” River yelled, all but kicking the door to the bar in. “Help us!”

Yaz sagged against the arch, the Doctor shouldered between her and Graham, breathing ragged. She was still out cold. This close, Yaz could see the sweat on her brow, wrinkled even in unconsciousness.

“Come on,” River said, stalking forward, coldly intent but for the spark of panic behind her eyes.“Karl!” she shouted again.

“Closed,” a large man said quietly, looking up from behind the bar he was wiping down. But his gentle expression creased into worry at the sight that greeted him. “What can I do?” he asked instantly. Yaz warmed to him.

River hissed in breath between her teeth, looking disturbingly rattled. Yaz hadn’t thought she was entirely capable, but her mouth was tight and her curls were in disarray, coated in ash.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, so quietly it was almost to herself. She spun, facing back towards them as Ryan struggled to close the door she’d kicked off its hinge behind them. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Help me,” she whispered, taking the Doctor’s chin in her hand.

Her eyes flicked up to Yaz’s.

“I promise I know what I’m doing,” she said, alarmingly, but before Yaz could ask what she meant, she’d reeled back and slapped the Doctor across the face.

Yaz shouted in protest, but the Doctor spluttered awake, gasping.

“What’ve I done?” she mumbled, eyes roaming. “ _Ow_.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” River said brusquely, though the tinge of panic, Yaz thought, made it somewhat less convincing. “Now _tell me what to do_.”

The Doctor straightened with effort, sweat gleaming on her forehead.

“Salt,” she said, incoherently, “three olives, a maraschino cherry, a shot of sherry, some charcoal from your fireplace—”

River gestured sharply in Karl’s direction. “Well, get on with it!” she said. Karl obliged, eyebrows raising near his hairline. Ryan stumbled for the charcoal.

“—sprig of rosemary,” the Doctor was still mumbling, “a very hot pepper, half a banana, should do it. Shaken!” She half-twisted out of Yaz’s grasp, insistent. “Not stirred—that’s very important!”

“ _Doctor_ ,” Ryan had handed off the charcoal, and in the absence of another task, appeared to have resorted to panicking, “what—”

Which was only half the question, Yaz thought dizzily, fear pounding in her throat, but there was no time to finish the thought. Karl was as good at his job as the bar’s only tender warranted, and he passed over a cocktail shaker in quick order—shaken. The Doctor chugged it back without a second thought, not even wincing at the taste, though Yaz caught sight of it before it disappeared and vowed to remove the image—and the smell— from her mind later.

“Now what?” River demanded, when she tossed aside the container, still pained and white as a sheet.

“Shock, shock, I need a shock!” she wheezed, hands scrabbling at Graham’s shirt. “ _No one_ kiss me, I’ll be expecting it!”

“A shock!” River scowled, panic still trapped behind her eyes. “Oh, I think we’ve all had quite enough shocks this evening, don’t you, _darling_?”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” she rasped, buckling over, still held up by Graham and Yaz’s increasingly flimsy grasp. Her breath rattled in her throat. “River, please—”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, the hair on the back of her neck raising, propelled by half a hunch. “What’s a Time Lord?”

The Doctor choked on her own spit, glancing at her in what could only be horror. For a moment, the sudden silence hung there, like dust in the air. Then she coughed and flung herself backwards, smoke wheezing from her lungs. She gasped as the last of it trailed from her mouth, staggering forward, out of their hands.

“ _Ah_ ,” she sighed, swiping a sleeve across her mouth. “Much better. You know what, everyone?” she said, tilting. “Take five.”

Yaz wasn’t quite fast enough, and she collapsed to their feet with a smile.

Silence, again. River raised a trembling hand and swiped it down her face, tight-lipped.

“Karl,” she said, very calmly. “I would please like a very strong drink.”

—

It wasn’t the longest night of Graham’s life—not by far. But it was edging up there.

He took a final, wincing sip of River’s questionable vodka—which she’d poured into a glass and offered to him as soon as they’d made it back to her flat, without even bothering to ask—and gave it up, setting it gently on the rickety coffee table. The lights were off in the front room again. Yaz and Ryan were tucked up in River’s spare room, shoes still on their feet, singed and sweaty, so tired that they’d folded together onto the bed without an awkward thought. On top of the sheets and blankets and everything. He’d thrown a quilt over them.

As for River, she’d deposited the Doctor onto the sofa, kissed her gently on the forehead, poured Graham a drink, and then promptly left with a dark promise to return when she had more intel. Even after everything, he _still_ had no idea what to make of her. But for all her strangeness, he supposed that if she were someone the Doctor loved, then there must have been something more to her beyond that sheer deadly edge.

He sighed and lowered himself to the floor with a muffled groan, his back against the sofa. The Doctor snored gently in his ear. She was just asleep, now. There was a hint of colour back in her cheeks, though the gloom washed them all out. He could hear sirens in the distance, through the crack in the front room’s grimy window. There was an old telly set crooked in the room’s corner. A phone hooked onto the wall. This world, he thought, fiddling absently with his wedding ring, was familiar to him. He’d lived it. Watched it. Not taken much notice of it at all, at the time, but then again—it weren’t too common to be given the gift of retrospect like this. You never thought too much about the world while you were living in it, and by the time you were able to look back on it with any sort of clarity, you were usually too busy living something new, something different.

He swallowed, some indefinable, irrational dread sitting in the pit of his stomach.

He didn’t belong here, either.

Not anymore.

“You’re a very loud thinker,” the Doctor whispered, sounding groggy. He started. The snoring had stopped, but he hadn’t even noticed.

“Doc,” he said quietly, twisting his neck painfully to look at her. “Are you alright, now?”

In the dark, she nodded, hair dried funny around her hairline, cheeks blotchy. A right mess—but she smiled down at him reassuringly.

“Right as rain,” she promised, and he almost believed her. “Is everyone okay?” Her face stilled, the only giveaway. “Where’s River?”

“Hunting down more intel,” he said. “Whatever that means. The kids are asleep.”

“Oh, good,” she sighed, leaning back against the thin sofa pillow. The relieved silence lingered. For a moment, he wondered if she’d fallen back asleep, and twisted his neck back into a more comfortable position. “I’m sorry I brought you here,” she said. Quick, quiet. Full of chagrin, when he didn’t entirely understand why. As far as some of their excursions had went, this one was proving half as dangerous, though by his own admission, increasingly convoluted. She was apologizing, he thought, for dragging them into her past. For stirring up the sorts of questions she’d so far managed to avoid, and so it weren’t even a proper apology, then, was it. She wasn’t sorry they were here. She was only sorry they were here to _watch_.

She was sorry, he thought, because all of their questions were going to go unanswered.

“You’re married,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“You never mentioned.”

And he felt a flash of regret burn quick and deep, shame bubbling up his throat. He couldn’t see her face, but he could picture it, that worried brow, those sorrowful eyes.

“I suppose,” she whispered, after a second had passed, “that I thought it would be easier to just forget.”

It wasn’t quite the apology he was looking for—if he was looking for an apology at all—but in the dark, it would do. He almost understood.

“Did you love her?” he asked. _Do you love her?_ Where did it all begin and end, when you could travel through time and space? Did it, ever? He thought back, briefly, to what she’d told them at the very beginning, on those steps, in the sun. How she carried her family with her.

Another siren pierced the night.

“I loved them all,” she said, very softly.

And maybe for right now, that was answer enough.

—

Ryan watched Graham offer the strange bowler-hatted figure a glass of vodka with a strained hospitality that only the British could truly muster.

“I don’t require sustenance,” the strange figure said, sounding genial, though somewhat tinny. A duck weaved its way around the figure’s feet, tracking filthy water across River’s linoleum floor. “But many thanks, old boy, the offer’s much appreciated.”

“Right,” Graham muttered, put-off but determined not to show it. He smiled nervously. “Of course.”

“This is Brother One,” River introduced, more preoccupied with strapping an extra gun to her thigh than with proper niceties. “Brother One, this is the Doctor and her friends.” Her head flipped up to look at them, hair bobbing. “My employer,” she explained. “A voice for the Order.”

“And the duck?” Yaz was brave enough to ask, brows knit together.

“A surveillance unit.”

“Weird,” Ryan muttered.

“Oh, that is _brilliant_ ,” the Doctor gasped, launching herself off the sofa into a crouch to take a closer look. She lifted the duck’s head with gentle fingers, marvelling. “Look at you!”

“Doc,” Graham said. Not sharply, but enough to pull her back into the moment. She withdrew from the duck, though she eyed it with interest as she stood.

“Right,” she said, brushing imaginary dust off of herself. She straightened. “What’s the plan?” Her nose wrinkled. “I mean, I assume there’s a plan, otherwise I’d go ahead and make one, but—”

River shot her a look. Dry, mostly, but fraught with history and context that Yaz was missing.

“Don’t worry,” she said, tilting her chin. “Leave this one to me, sweetie.”

The Doctor grinned.

“Well, then as they say,” she said. “ _Geronimo_.”

—

“Wait, so,” Yaz yelled into the Doctor’s ear, Berlin’s early morning flooding past her, wind and exhaust fumes catching in her mouth. “What exactly _is_ the plan, then?”

“We have to intercept the weapon,” the Doctor shouted back at her, glancing back alarmingly. Their motorbike swayed with the movement and Yaz gripped tighter, swallowing back a yelp. Despite herself, she couldn’t help the delight pulsing through her veins—adrenaline with a purpose, she could do.

In fact, adrenaline with a purpose, she could even enjoy.

“Brother Two and the duck were keeping an eye on Frank—he’s the American intelligence operative they’re using as a buyer—and he got bundled into an unmarked sedan just before the hotel blew,” the Doctor explained, wind whipping her hair off her face, “and taken to _another_ hotel on the other side of Mitte.”

“So the weapon’s gone,” Yaz said loudly, frowning.

“No! It’s still in East Germany. Frank promised to get Lexa across the wall in return. They’re headed for Checkpoint Charlie as we speak.”

“No way,” Yaz breathed. “Wait, but—why? She’s a psychopathic prisoner escapee, surely she can get across a wall on her own.”

“Harder than you might think,” the Doctor replied. “River thinks she’s been here a long time. She’s run out of funds, run out of resources—this is a last ditch effort to escape before it all goes to hell. No way off this planet in East Germany, after all.”

Yaz felt her frown deepen. “You’re telling me that outside East Germany there _are_ other ways off this planet?”

The Doctor risked a glance behind her again and touched a finger to the side of her nose.

Yaz leaned into her back, wincing as the bike swerved again, at the faintly singed smell wafting off her tuxedo jacket. “You know, history always ends up being a lot more complicated than they made it seem in school.”

At that, the Doctor laughed.

“Oh, Yasmin Khan,” she said, and Yaz could hear the smile in her voice. “You don’t know the half of it.”

—

Frank Lannigan was panicking.

“Four blocks,” he said tightly, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Painfully, terribly aware of the gun waiting down by his pocket, out of sight. Just in case. He’d been trained in extraction, however briefly. He’d gotten plenty of assets safely across the wall—it was an asset in itself, he thought absently, grimly, to be so painfully unassuming. His only asset, maybe, if what his monthly reports always said was true. “Your papers are in the side.”

“Your weapon,” Miss Hardin said, cool as a cucumber, her lips perfectly red, “is in the briefcase.”

Sweat dripped down his forehead. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears.

“Miss Hardin—” he started, not entirely sure of what he intended to say. There was a flash-burn embedded on the back of his eyelids, whenever he closed his eyes. That beautiful hotel in ruins. The people streaming out in panicked droves, screaming.

“Mr. Lannigan,” she interrupted him. Her voice was cold. There wasn’t a hint of worry, though her plans seemed to change all the time. “We’re being followed.”

“What?” He almost glanced over his shoulder in surprise, but he bit back the instinct. _Amateur_ , he thought. He glanced into the mirror instead, frowning at the parade of motorbikes following them.

His frown deepened.

“Is that a _duck_?” he demanded.

Lexa leaned forward. “ _Drive_ ,” she said.

“I can’t take us through the checkpoint like this,” he protested. “We go in blazing, we’ll be shot. We’re going to have a hard enough time as it is, visits are limited this time of year. We have to lose them.” He turned left, sharp. “We can try Checkpoint Delta instead.”

“No.” She still didn’t sound worried, even though he could see the bikes gaining on them with every second. “Abandon the vehicle. They’ll overtake us too easily. We go on foot.”

“But the pedestrian crossing is even further!” he protested, but there was a look in her eye that he wasn’t keen to test, sweat still soaking the back of his neck, a terrible, terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Miss Hardin—”

“If you want the weapon,” she said, not bothering to finish the sentence. Her eyes flashed. He shuddered and put his foot to the accelerator in one last burst, screeching to a halt along the canal. He tore out of the driver’s side, gun in hand reluctantly.

“Come on,” Lexa said, taking off at a pace he’d be hard-pressed to match—and in heels, too. He would have been impressed if he’d felt like he had the time or the inclination. The briefcase swung black and shiny in her grasp, glinting in the wan daylight. He hadn’t slept, and he was feeling it.

 _Great_ , he thought, feet pounding against the pavement. Now she had her papers and the weapon. Though something in his gut told him that she wasn’t about to double-cross him. Something vehement in her eyes that told him that for whatever reason she _wanted_ the weapon in his government’s hands.

The carnage of the hotel, its smoking ruins, flashed in his minds eye again and he tripped, shoe catching on an uneven slab.

“Gotcha,” a voice said, deep and throaty. Cool metal pressed against his forehead and he was yanked backwards, up, held against the body of a woman much taller than him. She smelled of smoke and vodka.

“River!”

He chanced a terrifying glance to the left, frowning in confusion at the rag-tag group trailing behind the woman with the gun. There was another lady leading the charge, blonde and singed, who looked like she’d been put away wet and left to dry. And—

He frowned. He hadn’t been imagining the duck.

“When you’re the one trying to prevent the world from ending,” the woman holding him said, tetchily, “you can do it however you like.”

“This is _unnecessary_ ,” the blonde said, and what he could see of her face was angry.

“Is it?” The metal pressed into his temple a little harder. “000873!” she called. “ _Stop_.”

Lexa had, in fact, already stopped. She turned slowly, briefcase swinging. Above her, a streetlight went out as morning finally arrived. The light was still grey and tentative. She stood out starkly against it all, the grey sky, the blandness of the wall towering behind her.

“River Song,” she breathed, eyes lighting up. “I thought you might be here.” Her eyes caught on the rest of them. “And your pet Time Lord,” she said, though he watched her face fall. “That’s a pity. I thought I’d dealt with you.”

“You’re not the first person to say that,” the blonde said cheerily. She waggled her fingers. “Or the last, probably. Definitely.”

“Doctor,” the younger woman beside her said, impressive brows drawing in concern. Concern for who, he wondered, breaths tight in his throat. Him? The weapon?

“Now,” the blonde—the Doctor?—said, hands raising into the air. “If everyone could just—”

He blinked, and there were three more guns in the air. Lexa had spirited one from beneath her skirt, and the weird thing in the hat—the one not holding the duck—had one pointed, too. At Lexa, he thought, though from this angle it was hard to say.

“If he dies,” the woman holding him said, dragging him forward as she took a step.

“—then I’ll find someone else to buy,” Lexa interrupted, unmoved.

“No, you won’t.” The woman’s curls tickled the top of his head. “You’re running out of time. Out of money. Out of friends. Half the people you tried to sell it to refused out of sheer human decency.”

“A rarity,” she hissed. “People like him—”

“Are expendable.” There was a pause. “Sorry, Frank,” she murmured, so quiet it was almost just for him. “But for how much longer? You can’t risk it.”

“Oh, I most certainly can,” Lexa said. “I have what I need to get out of Berlin. Who’s to say I couldn’t find the perfect buyer just beyond this wall? In fact,” she said coldly, “why don’t I prove it.”

Something sharper and hotter and _faster_ than a bullet whizzed past his cheek as the woman holding him dragged him out of the way. In the uproar that followed—burning hisses and electric shrieks that sounded like something out of a bad sci-fi film—he yanked himself free of the woman’s grasp and stumbled a few feet away.

His breath caught.

He brought his gun up to bear with a click.

The silence hit sudden. He could hear traffic in the distance. Everyday life, just beyond their little corner of insanity. It was a wonder no Stasi had stumbled upon them yet, but it was early morning, and they were tucked into the shadows of the wall, still blocks from any crossing.

The blonde stepped forward carefully, raggedy in the wind, mouth a tight, unhappy line. Nobody else moved. Lexa eyed him, expressionless. She was so close he could see the tiny mole she had beneath her left eye. Closer than any of the rest of them.

Close enough he was sure he wouldn’t miss.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Frank,” he said, a whisper almost stolen by the wind.

“Frank,” she repeated, calm and kind, somehow. “Put down the gun. All of you,” she said firmly. “ _Put down your weapons_.”

His brother’s watch was heavy around his wrist. There was no good choice here, he was realizing frantically, sweat beading on his brow, breath shuddering in his throat. So afraid, like he always was. So unsure.

If she took that weapon, even without him, the consequences would be beyond the scale of anything he could imagine.

Frank could imagine quite a bit.

“Put it down,” the woman was pleading, and there was something in the pull of her mouth, the strange oldness of her eyes that was compelling—

She was at the edge of his vision, on the edge of this story. Frank had never been at the centre of anything in his life, but he had the eerie sense, now, that this moment hinged on him. On his choice. Right or wrong—and he knew in his heart that there existed no such thing. There was only easy or hard. Better or worse. Less bad or more bad.

He was tired of more bad. He fired once. He was standing close enough to see the surprise in her eyes as the light left them. Lexa laughed as she fell, delighted. When she hit the ground with a final, muffled thud, she stopped.

The sweat gathering on his brow dripped down into his eyes. He dropped his gun, which clattered to the ground with a startling noise, glinting dully in the morning light.

He breathed a ragged, ragged breath. His eyes flicked to the eclectic people left standing, tense and still with shock. Strangers. Suspicious strangers, clearly working for—well, somebody. He should have done something about that, probably. He should have pegged them from the start, and now, in the aftermath, he should have been questioning them, reporting them, demanding some answers. Demanding the truth, which was clearly much stranger than he could possibly imagine.

Mostly—he just wanted to go home.

—

“Well, that’s that, I suppose,” River said.

“You almost sound disappointed.”

“You almost sound disapproving.”

Yaz half-averted her gaze, as the Doctor’s eyes didn’t waver from River’s face. What an impossibly strange relationship—but then, she supposed she couldn’t judge.

“I don’t approve of—”

“—weapons,” River finished. She didn’t sound irritated anymore. Just fond. “I know. But you all came in at just the wrong moment. The tone was set before you arrived.” She brushed a piece of hair off the Doctor’s face. “And we saved the world. The weapon is safe, I’ll return it to the Consortium with the Order.”

“I suppose,” the Doctor allowed.

“It were a bit anticlimactic,” Ryan said, from where he was leaned against the TARDIS. “No offense,” he added quickly.

“Not everything’s like it is in the films,” Graham said. Even in the mid-day light, Yaz thought he looked impossibly tired. Grey around the edges. “And that Frank bloke, he weren’t a bad sort.”

“No,” the Doctor agreed, though the set of her face was still troubled, if you knew where to look. “He was just human.”

For once, Yaz wasn’t quite sure she meant it in a good way. The twist of her mouth was a bit bitter. But what else could they have all done? Yaz had been wracking her brain, mulling over the same question for hours, and she kept coming up blank. River was right, maybe. They’d stumbled—or been dragged, really—into circumstances they’d had no control over. They’d been sidelined by something bigger than they could see. And somehow, in the process, they’d been so fixated on the bigger picture that they’d failed to pay attention to the smaller one.

All that, and still, she was exhausted. She lay a tentative hand on the Doctor’s arm, nodded once at River, and went to stand with the boys. It wasn’t quite privacy, but it would have to do.

She kept her gaze averted, as River and the Doctor said their goodbyes.

“I haven’t met this you,” River said. While Yaz hadn’t been looking, she’d unearthed what looked like a diary, TARDIS blue. “Where are we, then? Picnic at Asgard?”

The Doctor’s smile, even from a distance, was mild. Closed-off.

“I’m afraid I’m from a bit further off,” she said. “Finding you was an accident. A happy one.”

Yaz saw it again—a flash of something vulnerable in the curve of River’s face. But she covered it quickly.

“But I’ll see you again,” she said, half a question. Pleading.

“Spoilers,” the Doctor said. But she pressed a finger to the side of her nose, smile deepening.

River stared at her for a moment. Then she brought a hand around the back of the Doctor’s head and kissed her, much more gently and deliberately than she had in the cupboard.

Yaz closed her eyes and didn’t bother asking herself why. When she opened them, the sky was spitting down half-hearted rain and the Doctor was alone.

“Doctor,” Ryan said. The rain never bothered him. He didn’t even seem to notice it, though Graham’s face was already caught in a wince. “On the roof, you said—”

The Doctor looked to him, mildly.

“River,” he tried again. “You said that she was dead.”

Yaz swallowed, feeling tears prickling uncomfortably behind her eyes. She wouldn't let them fall. They seemed—unearned, somehow. “

“Yes.” The Doctor put her hands in her pockets. “But I've known that since the day I met her.”

Ryan’s breath caught.

“How can you just—”

She took his wrist gently and pulled him closer—just a hair. She turned them both so they were facing out the alley, into the street, the wall a monument just beyond them. Concrete, immovable.

But not forever. Not inevitably.

“Every wall has to come down eventually,” she said quietly. “Everything has to end. That's just how all this goes. But I got to see her again, because—the universe is huge and ridiculous,” she whispered. “And sometimes there are miracles. This is probably the last time I'll ever see her, but it's not the last time she'll ever see me.” She smiled, and it was wistful and sad and a hundred other things that Yaz didn't understand. “It's not over for her yet. And I can't rewrite a line of it. Not one word.”

She glanced back at them, still smiling.

“And in the meantime,” she said. She dropped Ryan’s wrist, gaze trailing longingly to the TARDIS. “We’ve got a story of our own to write. Shall we?”

She stepped past them, lacking her usual bounce. A mystery and an enigma wrapped in a charity shop coat, still. But something about the steadiness of her had reassured Yaz. There were mysteries, still, sure—but at the end of it all, it was the Doctor. How bad could they really be, in the end?

Besides, Yaz thought, following behind Ryan and Graham as they stepped back into the warmth of the TARDIS.

She’d had enough of Berlin.

She took in one last glimpse of that watery, rainy sky.

She closed the doors with both hands, gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, uh, i wrote about 20,000 words of this this week and i can't in all honesty recommend Doing That BUT
> 
> i did finish. so, there's that. If this feels at all scattered it's because my brain has literally been Fixated on Spyfall Pt 2 since it aired, so apologies, but I dearly hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it (when I wasn't busy being in a 2am haze of sleep deprivation) and I can't wait for you to read the rest of the great stories we've got lined up! Episode 2 of Series 11.5 will be starting this Monday, so do keep your eyes peeled.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought.


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